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WHY A BRILLIANT EXPRESSION
THEY
-N e n a ONeill,
co-author of Open Marriage
''ONE OF THE MOST
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perm ission o f W a lla b y B o o ks , a d iv is io n o f S im on & S chuster. In c .; c o ve r fro m Men: An
Owner's Manual c o p y rig h t 1984 by S tephanie B ru s h , re p rin te d b y p e rm issio n o f L in d e n
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c o p y rig h t 1985 USA Today, reprinted w ith perm ission; fo r the cartoon " O h , n o th in g , it s
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To Dad, Mom. Lee.
Gail, Wayne, and
Anne
Contents
Questionnaires xiii
A Personal Introduction xix
xi
xii CONTENTS
Notes 373
Bibliography and Resources 383
Index of Questions 386
Acknowledgments 393
General Index 396
Q U E S T IO N S W O M E N ASK
To Which of These Questions Would You Like the Answer?* Yes No
x ix
xx A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION
LISTENING MATRIX
Fem ale experience M ale experience
of pow erlessness of powerlessness
Fem ale experience M ale experience
of pow er of pow er
A Message to WomenMostly
During the past two decades, women have been frustrated be
cause the more they find themselves, the more they seem to
be placing their relationships with men in jeopardy. They have
expressed frustration that they were the ones doing all the work
in their relationships, and having to spoon-feed what they learned
to men. Even the spoon-feeding created feedback.
Over the years, I have seen womens body language alter as
the frustration accumulated. They didnt like what they felt in
themselves. I saw tears of hopelessness well in the eyes of more
than a few womenwomen who were alternating between hope
lessness toward men and a haunting fear that Maybe its me
. . . maybe Im doing something wrong.
Increasingly, women are finding men to be less and less lovable.
Yet we say men have power. In this book I redefine power to
include lovability. Which gives us a new look at male power.
When I wrote The Liberated Man, it was mostly women who
responded positively. They felt understood. A woman would
give it to a man with any excuseValentines Day, Fathers
Day, birthdays, anniversariesin the hope that he would under
stand her better. I think it is fair to say that the book accom
plished that much. But I noticed that only a small number of men
really changed. And those who changed the most changed
defensively because she wanted the man different. Over the
years, though, I noticed women back off from these men. Their
relationships became asexual. They were picking up on mens
defensiveness. As one woman put it, A man walking on egg
shells doesnt have much sex appeal. Some men were even
called wimps.
At first I didnt understand how a man who was more sensitive
could ever be less appealing. But I came to understand the
distinction between men who are defensively sensitive ( walking
on eggshells ) and men who are sensitive as a result of their
own security. Only a secure man is appealing.
Women know how destructive it is when they change for men.
Women changed so much for men that it shocks them now to
learn that while they were adapting to men, men were adapting
to women. Adapting in a manner that is so different from
womens experience of adapting that at first it is barely recogniz
able as adaptation.
XXrv A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION
to take her or his first steps. The women I was able to delve most
deeply with often said they feared that if they knew men were as
adapting to women as the women had been to men, they would
divert their anger away from men and toward themselves. Intel
lectually they knew that wasnt necessarybut in their gut, that
was their fear. *
And so "understanding men" created some genuine blocks.
Yet the men who felt truly understood seemed to be the first to
acquire the key prerequisite to change: personal security. Just as
support groups gave women the additional security they needed
to change.
All of this is fundamental to Eastern philosophythat we gain
power when we listen to the energy of a potential opponent and
ride with it rather than dissipate our own energy resisting it. This
philosophy, as manifested in martial arts like aikido, demon
strates how doing battle (as in the "battle of the sexes ) leaves
everyone with neither power nor soul.
I expect that more women than men will, at first, pick up this
book. But I think that if you give this book to a man and listen to
the stories it triggers for himwithout .arguing, without clam
ming up so that he senses hes telling each story at the expense
of closeness from you, he will gain power and you will gain
power, and you will discover a part of him which hears a part of
you he was too insecure to hear before. You will discover a part
of him you will love to love.
roles that make them acceptable to the other sex, I had to take
just as careful a microscope to the study of womens actual
behavior versus their verbalized behaviorin order to under
stand the real messages men were unconsciously receiving and
therefore what roles they thought they needed to adapt to. In
essence, womens desires were an important ingredient in deter
mining why men are the way they are.
Why Men Are the Way They Are does not focus on parental or
genetic influences on men. It focuses on the dynamic between
men and women that can be worked with on an everyday level.
Which is why the book is subtitled The Male/Female Dynamic.
Warren Farrell
103 North Highway 101
Suite 220
Leucadia (San Diego), CA 92024
PA RT 1
THE WAY MEN ARE
1
Men Have the PowerWhy
Would They Want to Change?
sign that I just couldnt hack the pressure. If 1 continued for just
a couple more years, and became a junior partnerjunior part
ners were the ones marked with potentialthen I could really do
what I wanted with my life after that.
Well, it took me seven years to get the junior partnership
offered to mewith politics and everything. But I got it. By that
time I had lost some of the desire to be a social-work lawyerit
was considered a clear step backward. In other ways I main
tained that idealit seemed more meaningful than kowtowing to
rich money. But I also knew the switch would mean forfeiting a
lot of income. My wife Ginny and I had just bought a new
homewhich we pretty much had to do with two kidsand I
knew theyd be going to college. . . . Ginnys income was only
part-time now, and she was aching to travel a bit.
By that time, I also realized that while junior partners had
potential, the people with the real ins in the legal community
were not the junior partners, but the senior partners. I figured I
had a pretty big investment in the corporate law area nowif I
just stuck it out for a couple more years, I could get a senior
partnership, get a little money saved for the kids' education and
travel, and then I could really do with my life what I wanted. . . .
It took me eight more years to get the senior partnership. I
can remember my boss calling me into the office and saying,
Ralph, were offering you a senior partnership. I acted real
calm, but my heart was jumping toward the phone in anticipation
of telling Ginny. Which I did. I told Ginny I had a surprise. Id
tell her when I got home. I asked her to get dressed real special.
I refused to leak what it was about. I made reservations in her
favorite restaurant, bought some roses and her favorite champagne.
I came home real early so wed have time to sip it together; 1
opened the door and said, Guess what? Ginny was looking
beautiful. She said, What is it, Ralph? I said, I got the senior
partnership! She said, Oh, fine, thats great, but there was a
look of distance in her eyes. A real superficial enthusiasm, you
know what I mean?
We nodded.
So I said, What do you mean Oh, fineIve been
working since the day we met to get this promotion for us, and
you say Oh, fine ?
Every time you get a promotion, Ralph,' Ginny announced,
you spend less time with me. I guess I just wish youd have
more time for me. More time to love me.
6 THE WAY MEN ARE
Why do you think Ive been working my ass off all these
years if it isn't to show you how much I love you? I said.
Ralph, thats not what I mean by love. Just look at the
kids. Ralph.'
Well. I did look at the kids. Randy is seventeen. And Ralph,
Jr., is fifteen. Randy just got admitted to collegea thousand
miles from here. Each year I keep promising myself that next
year Ill really get to know who they are. Next year . . . Next
year. But next year hell be in college. And I dont even know
who he is. And I dont know whether Im his dad or his piggy
bank.
I dont know where to begin with Randy, but a few weeks
ago I tried to change things a bit with Ralph, Jr. He was
watching TV. I asked him if he wouldnt mind turning it off so
we could talk. He was a little reluctant, but he eventually started
telling me some of what was happening at school. We talked
baseball, and I told him about some of my days pitching. He said
Id already told him. He told me about some of his activities,
and I spotted a couple of areas where I thought his values were
going to hurt him. So I told him. We got into a big argument. He
said I wasnt talking with him, I was lecturing him . . . spying
on him.
Weve hardly talked since. I can see what I did wrong
boasting and lecturingbut Im afraid if I try again, hell be
afraid to say much now, and well just sit there awkwardly. And
if he mentions those values, what do I say? I want to be honest,
but I dont want to lecture. I dont even know where to begin.
Ralph withdrew from the group. He had struck so many
chords it took us more than ten minutes to notice that he was
fighting back tears. Finally one of the men picked up on it and
asked, Ralph, is there anything else youre holding back?
Ralph said there wasnt, but his assurance rang false. We prodded.
I guess maybe I am holding something back, he said
hesitantly. I feel like I spent forty years of my life working as
hard as I can to become somebody I dont even like.
When I heard that sentence fifteen years ago, I was twenty-
seven. Its been perhaps the most important sentence Ive heard
in my life: "I feel like I've spent forty years of my life working
as hard as I can to become somebody I don't even like. Even as
I heard it, the ways it was threatening to be true in my own life
flashed through my mind.
Ralph continued: I was mentioning some of my doubts to a
Men Have the Power Why Would They Want to Change? 7
C I9K! Universal Press Syndicale Reprinted with permission All rights reserved.
Our reaction to the fact that men die earlier than women might
be viewed as the quietest response to genocide in the history of
humankind. It might be called androcide. More empathy is
directed toward widows who cannot find men than toward the
men who have died.
Christine and I had dated, if you will, between fifth grade and
twelfth grade. Then I went off to college and graduate school
and underwent a radical transformation in the way I looked at the
world. Each of us got marriedbut not to each otherand here
we were, some ten years after high school, sitting with each
others spouses in Christines New Jersey home.
In my heart of hearts, I was hoping Christine would have a
deep respect for the changes I had undergone. As we walked
across the wall-to-wall carpeting to take our leave, Christine
slipped her arm through mine and tugged me to the side. In a
stage whisper she summarized her observations: lam thrilled to
see you again. Youre exactly as I remember you.
Devastated by the compliment, I was too innocent to know
I had just experienced what I now call the reunion phenomenon
the belief, as we each return to our reunions with our micro
scopes focused on ourselves, that we have changed and everyone
else has remained the same.
In the past two decades many women have had the strong
belief that they have changed and men have remained the same.
This has made many women feel, Ive done my partnow its
his turn, or ask, Why am I always the one giving so much to
a relationship? While many women feel lucky to be bom a
woman in an era when women are so vital, they also feel cursed
being bom a woman in an era when men are so mediocre. The
result has been an increasing-resentment of men, or what 1 call a
bad rap against men.
The hopelessness of men has made many women feel
hopelessand angry, lonely, and self-righteous. I have seen the
17
18 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
F e m a le P rim a ry F a n ta s y M a le P rim a ry F a n ta s y
B etter Hom es
and G ardens 8.041.951 Playboy 4.209,324
Fam ily Circle 7,193.079 Penthouse 3,500,275
'All circulation figures and com parisons are based on listings in The
W orld A lm anac 1985, w hose source is FA S-FA X (S chaum burg, III.:
A udit B ureau o f C irculation. 1984). B ased o n total paid circulation
over a six-m onth period.
F e m a le P rim a ry M e a n s M a le P rim a ry M e a n s
to P rim a ry F a n ta s y : to P rim a ry F a n ta s y :
B e a u ty a n d M e n B e in g a H e ro *
F e m a le A lte rn a tiv e M e a n s
to P rim a ry F a n ta s y : M a le A lte rn a tiv e M e a n s
New W om an to P rim a ry F a n ta s y :
None
Magazine Circulation
S elf 1,091,112 , No
N ew W om an 1,055,589 alternative
W orking W oman 605,902 to
Ms. 479,185 hero/perform er
Introduction to Part 2 21
boys arc just playing out their traditional role with one more
mediumcowboys and Indians have switched turf to Star Wars.
Is the same true for the new woman ? Womens situation
has clearly changed in the last two decades. But has what women
want from men changed? Or is more expected of men, because
women feel they are giving more?
Do these questions imply that I think men are the way they are
merely because of what women want? No. But if a woman, his
parents, his peers, and his boss reward a man for success in ways
they are unaware of, he gets a very clear message. The only
group overtly telling men, Stopwe want you to be different
is women. Most women do want men to be different and hon
estly want to know if their message to men is more mixed than
they realize. They are not as concerned about what a mans
parents or peers didthey want to know what they can do and
whether they have a role in perpetuating problems about which
they are complaining. These issues are what I will address in this
part of the book.
<*
24
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears
S'Wfl'gf?
M s ., April 1 9 8 2
M s ., M arch 1984
26 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
Cinderella or Superwoman?
Have women changed? Yes. The changes that represent real
progressfrom assertiveness to work statushave been widely
discussed. Many fundamentals, though, remain remarkably the
same. Why do we think the progress has been greater than it is?
Because what is the same doesnt make the news. Superwoman
makes the news. Cinderella is old hat. But almost every wom
ens magazine has articles talking about Superwoman next to ads
focusing on Cinderellas. Even in Working Woman, New Woman,
and Ms.
Did the ads in M s* feature liberated dolls of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton or Golda Meir? No. Instead, in Ms. we find a full-page ad
(pictured on the top left of the next page) for a Cinderella doll
standing on top of a bell-shaped clock. The hands on the clock
point to 12:00-is time running out for the Ms. reader? This is a
Ms. readers exclusive for only sixty-three dollars, to keep her
company while she and Cinderella wait together for the prince.
No wonder she feels there is a male shortage.
Is this an isolated example? The previous months issue of Ms.
advertised the Eliza Doolittle Doll of the My Fair Lady Collec
tion, then Amy of Little Women. Many men credit feminists
*Ms. has a greater variety o f full-page ads than any of the other best-selling
(400,000 or more subscribers) womens magazines. The ads mentioned are
not meant to be a random sampling o f Ms. ads, but do represent the mixed
messages even the more independent woman buys and therefore sends to
men.
30 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . 7
All subscriber figures used here are listed in The W orld Almanac 1985,
based on the Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX reports. Savvy does not
make the list o f the top 140 magazines and is therefore not part of my
analysis.
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 33
COSMOPOLITAN
Billboard, December 15, 1984 Cosmopolitan, September 1984
>
l
Ms., June 1985
Virginal Sex
Each Christmas and birthday I debate between two types of
presents for Megan, the daughter of my woman friend: those I
think she should have and those I know shell love. When she
was eight to twelve years old there were two things I knew
would make it in the I love category: unicoms and posters of
heroes. This was true of her girlfriends as well. Its taken me all
this time to understand the connection. With neither the unicorn
nor the male star on the wall did Megan have to deal directly
with her sexuality. It was not like having a picture of one of the
boys in her class on her dresser. None of the boys in her or her
girlfriends classes could make it to this star status, so Megan
and her girlfriends did not have to deal directly with their
sexuality.
Of course, there were different types of male heroes on Megans
wallor different images representing how her sexuality might
eventually be channeled. In the same manner, for boys, different
types of performingsports, scholastics, or stealingare differ
ent kinds of experiments to become heroes, to be wanted by
different types of girls.
Why is it that so many girls first posters on the wall are male
and boys first posters on the wall are also male and only later
female? And why are boys male heroes also male performers?
Because a boy must learn to performto eam a female. For
him, the more attractive the female the less likely she is just
power, their availability (if they were rich enough they could
be engaged and still qualify as eligible").
for Christmas until she can get herself together.' Imagine Mary 's
parents calling their friends. Calling their neighbors. Calling the
paper. Facing how many special things they had baked for Phil
to eat. These are the pressuresmasked as supportfor Mary
to commit without falling in love. Her pressures to confuse love
with her primary fantasy. And to confine her search for love to
the framework, so that at best she falls in love within a
framework.'
How can we determine whether we are falling in love within a
framework in the reality of everyday life? Take this test:
Case 2: You are a single woman. Your friend would like you
to meet and go out with a short friend of hers. She explains he
has had plastic surgery four times, often wears makeup, and
has a high, squeaky voice. Some people think he is gaybut
she is fairly sure he is not, and he has taken an interest in you.
He docs have some odd habits, like watching some movies as
often as sixty times. It seems he may even have a glove fetish.
Interested?
___ Yes___ No. His name is Michael Jackson.
Zena Jeans
Fit for the Way You Live
Sue . . .
There I was, on top of Mt.
Snow, trying desperately to
avoid a mogul, when I found
myself plowing right into
this hunk from New Haven.
Id say he was a cross be
tween . . . uh . . . Sting and
my beagle.
He has those sad puppy dog
eyes . . .
So we shook hands and by
the time we disentangled our
legs, I knew everything
about him I needed to know.
Law School grad from Yale.
(Brains.)
Likes his mother. (Hope.)
Seventeen, December 1984 No steady girlfriend.
(Whew!)
Hates French Films. (Ditto.)
Sue . . . youll love him.
Absolutely die for him.
I know you hate my taste in
men. but this ones an ex
ception.
Do you know what his opening
line was when I ran into him?
Those jeans sure are
dangerous.'
Sue . . .
Im in love.
*Thc Zena ad is one o f the most popular in the best-selling girls magazines.
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 47
Note that the Zena girl plowed right into the hunk from New
Havenhe finds women by performing; she finds men by mess
ing it up. She did not do it purposelyshe found herself plowing
(she learns never to admit responsibility). Note that his gradua
tion from Yale Law School is called brainsa euphemism for
money, status, security, and ambition. And he even looked
powerful, intelligent, and famous, like the rock and movie star
Stingyet he was gentle, like a beagle. Of course, he created
the opening line, and he had to be uncommitted to warrant any
further attention. By the time we disentangled our legs I knew
all I needed to know . . . Im in love. So thats love.
It took the hunk a lifetime to prepare for and get through
Yale Law School. It took her a pair of jeans and a pair of
legs to get his law degree. With those and a Redken certif
icate she can Prepare for Greatness. Whats the message
to him? Yale Law isnt enough. He must be a hunk, have the
potential for fame, and be gentle. Then she might take her
jeans off.
Now suppose this ad were in a teenage boys magazine. A boy
whose career ambition is a Redken certificate from Aura School
of Beauty stumbles over a mogul and plows into a woman. He
writes his boyfriend:
Bob . . .
There I was, on top of Mt.
Snow, trying desperately to
avoid a mogul, when
I found myself plowing
right into this chick from
New Haven.
Id say she was a cross between
. . . uh . . . Madonna and my poodle.
So we shook hands, Bob, and by the
time we disentangled our
legs, I knew everything I needed to know.
Law school grad from Yale.
(Security.) v
Likes her father. (Hope.) . . . .
Bob . . . youll love her.
Absolutely die for her.
Do you know what her opening line
was when I ran into her?
48 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY AREN'T MEN . . . ?
gjgQA,
Mischief T-shirt,
Only S3,ae
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symbolized by the large heart into which all three boys have been
drawn, and by the small heart on the T-shirt to which the
mischief points. If the mischief actually led to the type of
mischief to which all the boys were drawn, the arrow might
point to a silhouette of two lovers. So a girl subliminally learns
that the sexual tease buys her both boys and love. And the
purpose of this love? Why, Love leads to Lenox. As Zsa Zsa
Gabor put it in a diamond ad: If I were good, why would
anyone want to give me a diamond . . , 8
BRIDES
Re O K m C H EC K LST
This checklist is the perfect helpmate tor keeping track of your wedding gilts. First, read
down the columns and mark the number of items you "want." Then clip and take these pages
to the Wedding Gift Registry at your tavohte giftware or department storeto list your
preferences. (Remember, that store is filled with everything from measuring cups to jogging
gear, so do list all "other" gifts that you wantbut don't see listedin the empty spaces at
the end.) When friends come in to shop tor your wedding gift, the Wedding Gift Registry
Consultant can offer perfect suggestions from your form on tile, and mark off what's pur
chased, to avoid duplications. Meanwhile, you keep these pages, and mark the number of
items "rec'd" in the boxes to the right. It wilTTeep you and your consultant up-to-date!
/ / / / / /
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*The female fantasy, like silver and china, also serves men, just as the male
fantasy o f sexuality also serves women. The difference between a primary
and a secondary fantasy is the difference in importance attached to each
fantasy by each sex.
54 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
Why is it, Hank wanted to know, that his future wife, Linda,
didnt need commitment to really open up at Club Med, but
needs it with him? I call it the Club Med Syndrome. Consider
the womans side of this.
Many women approach Club Med wanting to experience what
it would be like just letting it all go. N5 reputation, no expecta
tions. This time I'm going to experiment . . . even use men.
Ive never had a surfer boy before. As a result, many report
they are as orgasmic and sexually open as theyve ever been. But
when a woman returns home and meets a man she is interested in
for a long-term commitment, and he is less certain than she, she
finds herself less open than she was with a Club Med stranger
yet she honestly knows she would open up should he commit.
The woman is caught between two cultures. The first is her
natural self, which the Club Med island-no-money-primitive
setting is calculated to tap into; the second is her socialized
self, which was taught to associate sex with love, and in the
context of which she may consciously or unconsciously use sex
to gain commitment.
She tries to achieve this commitment by being all-out one
day to show him how good it can be," as one woman put it,
and by withholding the next day so hell be tempted to commit to
get it good again. These all-out and withhold feelings
may appear manipulative to a man whos had enough experience
to know the pattern. But for a woman, they may be so built-in
that they accurately reflect her inner conflict of culturesone
day she may genuinely feel all-out and the next day hurt by
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 55
reading the book. She felt she had been helped beyond belief.
What had actually happened was the workshop illusion.
What is the workshop illusion ? Feeling she had changed so
much, Wilma now wanted Raymond to change just as muchto
keep up with me. It sounded like a reasonable request, so
Raymond tried. From Raymonds perspective, though, Wilma
had changed very little. He felt that Wilmas major change was
that she was more demanding of him. As a result he felt his
response to her new demands was the biggest change that had
actually taken place.
The belief in magical, overnight change is not a harmless
fantasy. Rather, it raises expectations of our partners, makes us
more demanding than our own real change warrants, and makes
us self-righteous. The combination wreaks havoc in relation
ships. And workshop leaders who play into it are letting their
egos interfere with reality.
leave Ian and return to her husband in remorse? No. After the
rape charge Jessica finds herself only beginning to leam the
power of her love for Ian. The point is not whether Ian
committed the rapeit is that rape! with an exclamation point
sells to a female audience. *
In The Ring, the male hero is a Nazi officer whom the
heroine, Ariana, falls in love with and marries despite her anti-
Nazi familys disappearance as a result of the Nazi activity. She
is described as saved by the Nazi officer.
In Remembrance, Serena is rescued by a wealthy American
officer after her aristocratic family has lost its fortune in the
turmoil of post-World War II Italy.
In Remembrance and The Ring, being an officer is primary
fantasy materialbut only when the settingthe stageis war.
What type of message does this give military men about the
value of peace?
In To Love Again, Isabella finds herself in love with the man
who wants to destroy all she has left of her husband. In
Thurston House, Sabrina falls in love with the fiercest rival of
her late father. In Crossings, a wild and impulsive love for an
American steel magnate destroys the heroines devotion to
her husband.
What is the message to men? Once a woman has her security
needs met, shell be off with someone else who is really
excitinga steel magnate or a rapist. And someone who will
destroy her love for the man who was devoted to her.
How do men pick up these messages when it is women who
read the romances? By the distance they feel when they are not
exciting enough, or their rejection by women if they dont have
their success act togethernot rejection or distance from all
women, but rather the women they are taught to want mostthe
women who have options.
In Thurston House, Sabrina is flashdanced to control of a
mining empire at her fathers death. Because of her education,
experience, and savvy in the mining field? Hardly. Sabrina is
eighteen. In To Love Again, Isabella is flashdanced to become
the sole head of a successful fashion business when her husband
is killed by terrorists (which makes his death glamorous). Wc
sec, then, a fantasy of male death bringing female fortune; male
death flashdancing women to power and status.
Of course, the fantasy parallels real-life examples. In real life,
almost all of Americas one hundred wealthiest women made
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 59
never her fantasy to work hard to get to the top, then have an affair
with a male employee whom she flashdances to the top, then
marries and protects while he quits work to care for their child.
How can she justify this gap? By an underlying belief that her
body is worth more than his. As is her sexuality. Especially if
she is beautiful.
Does the more sophisticated woman outgrow these attach
ments to this flashdance to independence? Some dosome do not.
Playgirl did interviews with professional women who are Hooked
on Romance: One Out of Three Women Reads Over 50 Romance
Novels a Year. 2 4 The interviewer asked one woman who read
between forty and fifty romance novels per month if she had ever
found a man she thought she could love. Her answer was one word:
No. In response to What do you do fora living that gives you
so much time to read? she answered, lam director of securities
(naming a Fortune 500 company], corporate vice president. 2 5
CALVIN K LEIN
macys
N ew York, April 4, 1984
1
62 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
Note that her legs are spread open; she is on her back. Her
face does not appear focused on management decisions. And
now for the copy; . . . so at ease in a mans world.
old girl learns how she can both use and abuse her body and her
beautyand what prices and costs different types of uses and
abuses have. But she also learns that unless she is beautiful she
is not even a player. At least, not for the most competitive and
successful boys. And she learns that the most beautiful girls, like
the most powerful boys, are always conquering new frontiers: if
not a Kennedy, then an Onassis. The distinction is between the
good and bad ways of getting heroesthe off-limits and within-
limits heroes. But no one questions the primary fantasy
conquering the hero. Nor the primary means: beauty. Or that the
best beauty can venture into frontiers not reachable by ordinary
beauties.
Power Tools
Docs the new woman dance her part in the sex-role dance with
new stepsor the old ones? Does she focus on internal beauty
and find that men do not respond? Does she use honesty rather
than flirtation, and find she has no men'to be honest with? Does
she hope to be loved for her independence and search for men
who can express dependence? And if she hopes for all these
things, are her messages to men consistent with that hope?
Lets start with what happens behind her locker room door
the development of beauty power.
AM?
' s h o w s YOU HOW TO
KEEP
IT BRIEF I A C I N G UP TO Y O U R N E W
RESPONSIBIUTIES... BEAUTIFULLY
ABSOLUTE M AK E-U P ESSENTIALS
THAT G O WHERE YOU G O .
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68 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
GETTING
AHEADATTHE
OFFICE
Isnt this woman just putting her legs up, as any man would
do ? Why does it have to imply flirtation if a woman does it?
Isnt that sexist? The power of studied casual beauty and
body language is the power of sending off multiple messages and
claiming innocence. As Jontue perfume puts it, innocence is
sexier than you think. Studied innocence can be an effective
cover-up. What we see in both the articles and ads is how
pervasive is the training to use beauty and the hint of sexuality as
tools in business success.
Back to the career guide. How is a woman instructed to show
shes done a good job? Heres how: . . . whether youre
making a point at the podium or holding a coffee cup, your
hands will show youre doing a beautiful job. Only if she uses
the correct nail enamel. She is told this look turns business into
pleasure.
And so we begin to see the connection between a career in
business and a career in men (husband as the source of income).
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 69
The babies entered into beauty contests are not the only ones
with parents who teach them beauty power. Studies show moth
ers hold, kiss, and cuddle attractive babies more than less attrac
tive babies and, more important, tend to limit their attractive
babys development in other areas by neglecting, for example, to
offer such stimuli as challenging toys.36
*Thc Canadian National Film Board cites 22,000 snapshots. The Playboy
photo editor, Gary Cole, could not confirm that number. Based on in
formation from him, my estimate is 6,000 snapshots.
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 75
*Scc Chapter 8, Why Did the Sexual Revolution Come and Go So Quickly ?.
for the stages that lead to rape.
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 77
and therefore both the look of love and the sexual tease/
promise arc crucial. If a woman gets the formula down, she is
promised a life of love meaning total security and wealth
via a man. In this way love becomes a power tool and a woman
is taught to fall in love with security euphemism love.
1
Seventeen, December 1984
How docs Loves Baby Soft woman (see ad above) fall in love?
She falls. Literally. It used to be she drops hankie; he picks
hankie up." Now she just drops herself and he picks up the
whole hundred pounds. As she falls and he rescues, she falls in
love. Or perhaps she fell in love first and then fell. . . . Either
way she falls in love by messing things up; he gets love by
performing. She is like the Zena jeans woman who plows into a
Yale Law grad and gets love and status in one fall. The competi
tion to mess it up is fierce. How to succeed in business by
fallingin love.
What W om en Want: The M essage the Man Hears 81
How to Think
Making it in a mans world without depending on sex or
beauty power requires a complex blend of conformity and inde
pendent thinking. While some of the articles, especially in Ms.,
encourage this, a common denominator of womens magazines is
the quizfrom Redbook to Self to New Woman to Play girl.
Quizzes are fine, except there is almost always, in examining the
answer choices, a correct selection. Ms. rarely, if ever, presents
right answer quizzes to its readers. Articles, rather than quiz
zes, provide the right answer in Ms.
How does this relate to men? Women often accuse men of
being dogmatic. People who look for the right answer find
people who are dogmatic.
82 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
How to Flirt
Getting ready for a social event without thinking about how
youre going to flirt, or if youre going to flirt, is like ironing a
dress and then not wearing it. 4X So advises Glamour, the
second-best-selling magazine in the fantasy-not-yet-fulfilled cat
egory, in an article on flirting.
84 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
Steinem and touted as the possible new male hero of the late
1980s.
Male violence is declared sexy not only by box-office sales,
Newsweek covers, and Danielle Steel romances of Ian the Rapist,
but by serious nonfiction, like that of feminist writer Rosemary
Daniell, whose popular Sleeping with Soldiers was published in
1985. The macho man, the man who kills (as in soldier), who
sometimes displays a brutal brand of male chauvinism, is
found to appeal to such feminists. Appeals sexuallyas in sleep
ing with soldiers. The book was promoted under the headline Is
the Macho Man Todays Prince Charming?
On the one hand, I condemn this attitude in that it glorifies
behavior which is punishable as rape. It is one more way of
saying, Risk your life for mebe a man. On the other hand,
heres some honesty, finallyacknowledgment of the conflict
within women about men, an honesty that allows men to ac
knowledge the conflicts within themselves. Both sexes must
begin by acknowledging their internal conflicts before we un
ravel our societys rape socialization.
boys? Hardly. The most sought-after boys are boys like Scott
and Bruce. The burning question in All Night Long is has
Jessica gone too far with Scott? In Playing with Fire, it is has
Jessica gone too far with Bruce? The boys the girls seek out
pay the least attention to the girls' nos. They are willing tq
challenge the female mafias strongholdthey play with fire
and challenge the girls to stay out all night long.
While male adventures pit man against nature and death,
Sweet Valley High romances pit girl against male and sex. Any
boy who doesnt create this tension is not worth being sought
after by a female heroine. Keeping boys coming after her body
and keeping them from going too far is the age-old game of
Playing with Fire. The game the eleven-year-old girl is excited
about enough to keep some of the countrys best publishers
churning out competing thirty-volume series of these romances
by the multimillions of copies. It is a game that starts at age
eleven. Does it continue in college? And how long does it last?
Lets look at the female mafia in college years and Joan Collinss
version of how to build a fire at fifty-one years.
S e ve n te en , D e c em b e r 1 98 4
Social Rape
Rape socialization? When twelve-year-old girls are taught to let
their nuance say yes while their words say no; when violence is
sexy; when the boys who get the most attractive girls approval
are the ones trying hardest to break through the barriers erected
most successfully by the most attractive girls in the name of
morality and reputation; when rape! carries an exclamation
point because it increases the sales of Danielle Steel novels;
when New Woman advises on the power of seduction and Cosmo
on the power of making hinveam it; when eleven-year-olds call
Playing with Fire a sweet romance . . . when all these are part
of our everyday socialization, is it any wonder that a large
UCLA study found that 54 percent of boys and 42 percent of
girls felt it was okay to force a girl to have sex under certain
circumstances?53 Or that Cosmo, after promoting seduction, then
90 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
*See Chapter 8, Why Did the Sexual Revolution Come and Go So Quickly?
3
The F la s h d a n c e Phenomenon
*For the male participation, see Chapter 4, Why Arc Men So Preoccupied
with Sex and Success?"
The F la s h d a n c e P henom enon 93
the boss responds, Have it your way. Youre fired. Ill pick
you up at eight tomorrow evening.
Now, heres the rub. Shes not fired. Nor did she for a second
respond to his declaration with the look of someone who thought
she was fired. So she goes out with him after all, and keeps her
job. We discover that a man unwilling to take no for an answer
will ultimately get the woman who may, in fact, have been
willing all along (of this were never certainbeing certain
would spoil the mystery). Her beauty and talent allow her to be
successful at playing harder to get. As her black woman friend
points out, letting the man do all the pursuing, playing hard-to-
get, playing pseudoindependent, never risking rejection directly
thats the honky way.
If she had really given up her job to go out with the boss, we
could appreciate her sticking to her principle. If she had kept her
job and refused her boss, we could appreciate that. But when she
keeps her job and dates the boss, her constant rejection of him is
not independence, but rather performance pressure to see just
how long and hard he will pursue, to see just what a fool he will
make out of himself for her.
It is one more condition. She can avoid responsibility for the
potential conflict of interest by passing it on to him. The proba
bility that they both do this unconsciously makes it all the
worseunconscious behavior must become conscious before
theres hope of stopping it; performance pressure is only exacer
bated by a lack of consciousness or perspective about what one is
doing.
Of course, this never would have worked were she pimple
faced and plump. And he would not have stood a chance had he
not been recognizable to her as the man who signs my pay-
check. But it wasnt just that he was successful and wealthy.
He had become successful and wealthy precisely because he
never took no for an answer. Whether it was her no or the nos of
the work world. So, the more attractive and sexy woman isnt
always conscious of choosing only successful men. But if shes
beautiful she often unconsciqusly protects herself with a certain
aloofness to keep away every male welder.
Which man gets past this aloofness? The one whose name
appears on her paycheck, the one who is unwilling to take her
nos seriously. So, unwittingly, she selects a man who has devel
oped a combination of status and a willingness to hold her nos in
contempt.
94 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
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What has and has not changed in the past two decades? Reality
has changed. The reality, for example, of divorce. As marriage
no longer provided security for a lifetime, it appeared women
adjusted by getting into careers. But when the fantasyof a
career created by ones own effortscollided with the reality of
what had to be sacrificed for a career, it faltered. Yet career was
an important safeguard and a highly successful career a wonder
ful fantasy. So man as flashdancer of woman to success began
to be an alternative fantasy a man could fulfill for a woman.
The teenage girls fantasy hero, whether a male hero on the
wall, a magical unicorn, or another combination of male and
magic, such as a guru, all have yet another advantage to the girl:
the association with a successful male image without having to
be sexual with the everyday man. Sex, like love, was to be saved
for a frameworka framework in which magic could occur.
The female primary fantasy, then, changed in only one re
spect: the women expects more of a man. Different types of
women have different expectations: for Ms. Equality, bigger
diamonds and salaries, while the man shares housework and
exudes gentleness; for the more traditional woman it is four
pages of wedding gifts plus income for a lifetime; for the teen
ager it is Lenox and a Yale law degree. The range is from man
as wallet to man as a financial safety net.
What is the best means of attaining this fantasy, as presented
in traditional magazines like Family Circle and Better Homes
and Gardens? Always a man. That is, a husband/man. Men and
marriage are the means as well as the fantasy. They become the
fantasy because they are the means.
101
102 WOMEN HAVE CHANGED WHY ARENT MEN . . . ?
V o m n u^0 rr<m 4
m a)or m altcnfenert
(attractivmJicfs)
*
c
*
m a isu m
DESIRABILITY fnct uownt enfeaa
(and am if It alive)
109
110 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
that the only common denominator that can appeal to men of all
classes is their desire to achieve acceptance by the cultures
most "beautiful women.' Or, conversely, the common denomi
nator is their anxiety about being rejected by these women.
(From the marketing perspective, the greater a mans anxiety,
the more likely he is to buy the product promising to make the
anxiety go away.)
Exactly what makes the beautiful girl/woman image so much
more powerful than other products that are also advertised?
Other products, like cars or beer, occupy only a tiny portion of
our subliminal seduction; the beautiful woman exists wherever a
woman is pictured. Why? Because the marketing researcher
knows the male does not feel worthy of her. And if the market
ing researcher can make the man feel that buying the product
will give him hope of being worthy of her, he will buy the
product. This is so much a part of our unconscious that we will
see, in Male Message 2, how the woman does not even have to
be pictured to restimulate his feeling that he will be worthy of
her if he does something.
Each culture has a different but overlapping standard of beau
tiful women. And in most cultures powerful males fight each
other to have access to them. Have we made progress in more
civilized societies? Not quite. In technologically advanced
cultures there is an advanced tension: on the one hand, the
rational mind has more information to fight this socialized and
genetic propensity; on the other, technology is better able to
penetrate the rational minds unconscious. In fact, the desire to
think of ourselves as rational often only increases our denial
("I'm beyond that . . . ), which puts us more off guard.
Somehow these ads never suggest to the adolescent boy that
he search within himself. The boy does not see a model-type
woman standing next to a product any man can afford as she is
watching a warm, sensitive man reading Im O.K., Youre O.K.
in an unemployment line. No matter that the man may just have
dropped out of a position selling something he didnt believe in
and is now struggling to bring integrity into his life.
Male Message 1 is subconsciously experienced by the boy like
this: "Some girls in my class already look like movie stars. If
they wanted me as much as I want them, then Id know I was
okay. They are genetic celebrities. I am a genetic groupie.
How can a woman be expected to believe this about men when
she has never heard a single man say, She genetic celebrity; me
112 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
*And if he did not, he lived in fear of being rejected by both sexes, his
parents, and even himself. Each message that only heterosexuality is normal
leaves boys who discover they are gay between a rock and a hard place.
Why Are Men So Preoccupied with Sex and Success? 113
one will cheer for his replaceable part. She senses this insecurity
and wonders how a man can be such a child.
In the process, he is learning many things. He learns it is not
popular to verbalize feelings, which he therefore keeps secret,
even from himself. He is learning, subconsciously, that femalev
support, nurturing, is conditionalit goes to the men on the
playing field. Therefore her support is really pressure to keep
performing.
Nor does he ever verbalize the subconscious feeling that the
cheerleaders are a socially sanctioned group of females using
their bodies to cheer on twenty-two males to their self-destruction.
Chcerleading is the socially sanctioned female encouragement of
male molestation. The message is that the molested survivor gets
the female. It is organized practice for a girl to learn how she can
get someone else to take lifes riskspreparation for financial
dependency.
Not all boys earn attention via sports. For a different type of
woman a different type of boy might earn attention by becoming
newspaper editor or student-body president. That was my route.
For others, it might be speeding in a flashy convertible. Marc, a
man in our mens group, verbalized some of his own decisions
during a meeting.
The topic was the first crush that we never told anyone about.
Marc started. In the eighth grade I had a crush on Janice. She
had a sweet, innocent face, gorgeous hair, and great breasts. At
basketball games, Id watch her cheer. I fantasized approaching
her . . . even kissing her. I still have images of looking at her
from a distance. I mean, I knew there was no way I could really
get Janice to consider meand if I did, not for long enough to
admit I wanted to touch her all over her body. Other girls,
maybe, but Janice, no.
Did you ever try? Jim asked. You should have gone for
it was implicit in his tone of voice.
Nobody in our grade was worthy of Janice. She dated
Jeffa tenth-grader and basketball player, I think from a rich
family; he got a new car as soon as he could drive. The older I
got, the more I noticed who these beautiful girls went out with.
Maria was Italian, from a poor familyshe was so impressed
when Tony became a Green Beret. She fell in love with him. But
in college, some of the prettiest girls would hang out at the mcd
school and law school libraries. Or theyd somehow get invita
tions for weekends with the guys from the prestigious private
Why Arc Men So Preoccupied with Sex and Success? 115
schools. Theyd fall in love with one of them. I was doing pretty
well, but I didnt know if I could keep up. I didnt know whether
to give up marry Marge who wasnt so beautiful but loved me
and didnt expect all that or hold out and try to make it . . . until
I could prove myself to one of those girls.
Everything I considered to make it had its problems
acting might leave me waiting on tables; politics corrupt; engi
neering might leave me a bore; the military dead; sports might
turn me into an insurance salesman at thirty. It was so over
whelming . . . so lonely. I guess I felt if I married Marge we
could make it as a team.
Marc observed two types of compensations for his perceived
powerlessness. Or two types of defenses against rejection from
women: short-term and long-term. Short-termlike getting on
the basketball team, buying a flashy car, or building a muscular
bodyattract attractive women, but usually only for a short
time; long-termlike doing well in school, preparing for a pro
fession, or apprenticing for a union joblast longer. When
short-term defenses run out and the long-term ones dont look
possible, he may try desperate defenseslike gambling, steal
ing, or dealinghoping to make it big quickly. Or he may try
a combination of long-term and desperate defenses; if he is
caught, it results in a John DeLorean, a Watergate, or an Abscam
all replete with males.
None of these, of course, is necessarily a defense. All can
involve multiple motivations. And they can all offer internal
rewards, excitement, and respect from parents or peersjust as
being a cheerleader can for a female. But all these male
choices have a different meaning for the male than for the
femaleeven today. A woman is rarely motivated to be a doctor
to minimize her rejection from men. Or to assure her of the
money to support a man.
This is a boys perception of what it takes to earn attention.
Girls are also desirous of male attention and feel they have to
earn it by being attractive enough. Most girls do not feel they are
attractive enough to get easily the boys they want for what they
want them for. The more attractive a girl is, the higher she sets
her sights. For her, theres also a gap. She feels her other
options like becoming student-body presidentwill not have
the same impact on her as on a boy. They may make her
respected, but not necessarily more attractive to boys. The girl
learns she can fill the gap in a different way.
116 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
How did she finally get into this bikini? The song continues:
She got into this bikini when she ate cottage cheese . . .
So get yourself a body thatll bring the boys to their knees.
So he begins to leam sex isnt free. Hell give his away for free,
but on some level, she charges for what he gives away. So, on
the physical level, as well as with attention, he learns: I must
earn my way financially and/or by making myself a hero to gain
equality with her second natural resourceher sexuality. This
is Male Message 3.
Isnt it a womans company that men pay for, not her sexual
ity? Think about it. Sue and Linda went to Grey Rocks, Canada,
for a ski trip with their two male suitemates, Jeff and Joe. They
were each looking for other partners; no one paid for anyones
dinner. Then Sue and Jeff found partners with whom they had a
sexual relationship. Once Sue found a man, her dinner and drink
expenses dropped to $11. Jeffs went up to $108. During this
period Joe and Lindas expenses totaled about $60 or $70
combined. If it was a persons company that was being paid for,
Jeffs woman friend would have been paying for his company
too.
Item: 1973. The oil crisis hits the United States. Huge lines
form for access to short supplies of gas. Everyone is preoccu
pied with how best to solve the problem: Where do I go for
the shortest line to get the gas? How can I beat my neigh
bors to the pump? What time must I get up to do it?
She met some guy from Princeton, invited him for some big
weekend we had talked about going to together, and we broke up
a month or two after that.
Were you hurt? Bob asked. ^
Well, you know . . . I could quit my job at the supermar
ket! Myron laughed, avoiding the question.
Ski trips used to wipe me out, Glenn recalled. Rent a
lodge, rent a car, rent a slope, consume a drink, devour a meal
. . . and then I remember one girl thinking she was real indepen
dent because she treated me to one dinner and rented her own
skis. Sometimes those weekends ran three hundred dollars . . . I
could only afford one or two a year. 1 guess I paid about 90
percent. But then Mary would be able to afford another weekend
with her girlfriends, five or six girls to a lodge. Theyd meet a
bunch of guys whod buy them drinks and half their meals.
A1 chimed in: You guys seem to find women without chil
dren. Ive been involved with two women who have children,
and there was always this sense I felt that Id be a real nice
daddy/uncle if I paid for their kids at the movies, or dinner, or at
a carnival. Fun at a carnival meant financing the kids and trying
everything. Being a good sport meant doing it until they won a
prize. A weekend with Madeline and the kids could run into
hundreds without batting an eyelash. Its like I have to figure out
a career thatll pay for all that.
I have only myself to blame, Norm started. Im a sucker
for taking women Im serious about on European vacations.
Then buying them fur coats, lingerie, dresses, and once even a
Mercedes in Europe. Fortunately, the woman I bought the
Mercedes for became my wife!
Of course, all of these payments for a womans sexuality
are symbols of how effectively a man will be able to handle the
better homes and gardens, and the $140,000 per child in the
family circle. A mans consciousness of having to pay often makes
him avoid the humanities in college and enter the higher-paying
sciences; take hazardous construction, coal mining, or welding
jobs, and the jobs in cold and isolated regions like Alaska.
In the process, he somehow senses that the word love may
cost him. So professing love creates a built-in tension: on the one
hand, it is a way of reducing rejectionpromising her primary
fantasy to get his (he may not know about love, but hes begin
ning to leam about politics); on the other hand, love may mean a
lifetime of payments.
Why Are Men So Preoccupied with Sex and Success? 121
O 198) Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission All rights reserved.
get rejected even more than men who dont take no for an
answer.
The core of this male neurosis comes not from taking the
initiatives, but rather from overcoming all the nos; from the fear
that if he asked a woman if shed like to participate in his sexual
fantasy as soon as he was willing, hed get almost 100 percent
nos; from the feeling that when hes first willing, theres no
word in the female vocabulary for yes, but if only he is good
enough, polite enough, persistent enough, successful enough,
romantic enough, gentle enough, if he earns enough, spends
enough, cares enough, commits enoughif, if, i f . . .
How he takes this responsibility determines whether he is a
hero or a jerk. (They are two sides of the same coina jerk is
often a potential hero who messes it up along the way.) From a
womans perspective, this may seem a bit exaggerated. Many
women say: I make my cues pretty clear. Men dont have to
take such a great risk. Or One thing that makes women mad
is when were giving off cues that were not interested and the
man keeps coming on. Ive discovered, though, that womans
set of cues can be clear to the woman. But every woman is an
individual, and to a man each womans set of cues is as individ
ual and unique as the woman herself He is expected to discover
just the right formula to determine which cue means what to
which woman at whichever stage of development in their sexual
relationship. When we multiply the options by 150, we have
full-blown obsession, which makes becoming a jerk quite easy.
For example, a woman might say I know the moment I meet
a man whether Im interested. So she may give off receptive,
excited vibrations immediately. For most women who know
immediately, though, it is not okay to act immediately. There
fore the man may feel positive vibrations at the beginning of the
evening and varied vibrations as he spends more time with her.
From his perspective, he feels her slipping away while hes
paying for dinner.
While some women know immediately, others say, With
most men I really dont thinkvmuch about sex until the man starts
coming on. Once he starts coming on, how he does it makes a
difference about whether Im receptive or not. A lot of women
identify with that sentiment. But it contradicts the expectation
that a man shouldnt come on until he feels receptive cues. On
the one hand, he should wait for receptive cues; on the other
hand, she wont give them until he comes on. If he waits too
126 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
* T o th e d e g r e e h e is c o m p u ls iv e ab ou t s e x h e is r e a lly n o t in t o u c h w ith h is
se x u a l fe e lin g s in the fu lle st s e n s e o f th e w o r d .
130 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
T H E M A L E S E A R C H F O R E Q U A L IT Y O R T H E
G E N E T IC C E L E B R IT Y C R IS IS
S tage 2: The M ale S earch for E quality the Oil Crisis of M ale
Puberty
M a le M e s s a g e 2: I m u s t p e r f o r m fo r t h e g e n e t i c c e l e b r i t y s a t t e n
t io n .
Why Are Men So Preoccupied with Sex and Success? 131
M a le M e s s a g e 3: 1 m u s t p a y fo r f e m a le s e x u a l i t y .
M a le M e s s a g e 4: 1 m u s t r is k r e j e c t io n a b o u t 1 5 0 t i m e s fo r f e m a le
s e x u a lity . D o n o t a ss u m e h e r n o s m e a n n o if h er
n u an ces sa y y es.
M a le M e s s a g e 5: I m u s t f o c u s a l l s e x u a l a n d e m o t io n a l e n e r g y o n
f e m a le s . H o m o p h o b ia is b e t t e r th a n b e in g a
se x u a l s u s p e c t .
D e f e n s e 2: S u p p r e s s s e x u a l f e e l i n g s a n d r e p la c e t h e m w ith d is
h o n e s t y p o litic s w o r k b e tte r th a n h o n e s t y .
D e f e n s e 3: P r a c t i c e r a ilr o a d s e x . D o n o t s t o p a t f r i e n d s h ip . T h e
l o n g e r t h e p e r i o d o f f r i e n d s h i p , t h e lo n g e r t h e p e r io d
o f p o t e n t i a l r e j e c t io n .
1__________________________________________________
2 _________________________________________________________________
3__________________________________________________
The reader will doubtless find a few women who married men
who are supportive but less successful than themselves, like
Bella Abzug. But Bella Abzug fits neither the age category nor
the highly attractive category. She has fewer options. And be
sides, her husband is still successful enough to support them
both, should they desire that. So cross off names of such women.
If no one is left, we can add people we dont knowbut know
of. How many are left?
If anyone remains or appears in the know of category, is it
a woman under thirty driven to be a success in a highly risky
field who has married a man with the contacts and style to
manage her talents? That is, a man still playing a financial role?
Remember Marc? He married Marge, who wasnt his fantasy
woman, but she loved him. Some men like Marc team up with
women like Marge in the hope that theyll make it only to
face a male mid-life crisis if they do make it and a male mid-life
crisis if they dont. The more he makes it, the more attractive he
becomes to another woman, the more he is tempted away from
Marge. During the mid-life crisis, even happily married men
often feel that now that theyve made it to the point where
theyre successful enough to attract the women in the ads, theyre
married to a woman who doesnt fit the image. Few marriages
are strong enough for long enough to withstand the Kathys who
once rejected the Neil Diamonds when they were the class frog,
but now that the men are class princes, are eyeing them.
The more Marc is tempted away from Marge, the more he
feels guilty about betraying the woman who supported him, so
he would become, ironically, more attractive to other women.
Why Are Men So Preoccupied with Sex and S u ccess? 133
neither mens fault nor womens fault. They are adult men still
playing out their oil crisis getting their rewards vicariously
to the degree they earned them vicariously.
Before we delve more deeply, Ill do some clarifying. The
difference between the desperation felt by men and that felt by
women as they pursue external reward power lies in mens
having to prove themselves worthy recipients not only of wom
ens attention and sexuality but also of the approval of parents
and peers. We mistakenly tend to see these as three separate
contributors to male pressure. They are not.
Take parents, for example. Most parents want to help their
child live compatibly with the other sex. Even when they dont
like what they see they consider it their duty to prepare the child
for hard reality. They dont tell their daughters, When you
grow up you should support your husband. A career womans
expectations are to support herself. Not her husband. Since men
observe that career women often marry up, a womans career
can actually increase the pressure on a man to perform to earn
his way to equality with her. By preparing boys for this reality,
parents unwittingly increase the pressure on boys. And it makes
proving ourselves to our parents not very different from proving
ourselves to girls.
I am increasingly impressed by the degree to which so many
men risk their lives, investments, and careers for an attractive
womans attention, especially her sexual attention. Think of the
men willing to risk their careers with charges of sexual harass
ment for an affair with a secretary or student. Think of the men
who risk years in prison, total humiliation, and the destruction of
career and family for the attention of or sex with an underage
female, the one female they believe they can have access toa
child.
Think of how often we read of men throwing themselves into
cold rivers or hot fires to rescue a woman. We hear of women
performing such heroics for the sake of a childbut try to recall
one example of a woman doing that for a man, even her hus
band. It is not inherently good or bad to risk ones life for
another. But when men risk So much to be a hero or to get sex, it
makes one wonder about the limits of male sexual vulnerability.
then bites off the head of the male. The male is so locked into
the sexual act that he cannot prevent himself from being con
sumed. The ultimate in vulnerability.
Like the praying mantis and black widow spider, a man may^
feel so vulnerable and powerless that, for the sake of visibility
and respect, he will risk his head being chopped off as a war
hero or boxing hero; as a fireman; as a president or an astronaut;
as the person who creates the master race or destroys the human
race or gets the Nobel Prize to save it from destruction. Or, if
national heroism is out of reach, as a volunteer fireman in his
hometown. Its all the same. In the process of gaining his
familys respect, peer group respect, female respect, and his own
respect, a man may forfeit his family, sacrifice his wife, destroy
his body, and lose his soul.
The male training to overcome sexual rejection also turns out
to be valuable for success. Both at work and with women, not
taking no for an answer creates the core of male strengths and
the core of male neuroses. Women are attracted to mens suc
cess; they hate mens defenses. They hate men who dont take
no for an answer; they love men who dont take no for an
answer. Both are ways of dealing with female sexuality: chang
ing nos into maybes with women is direct; changing nos into
maybes at work is indirect. Success is the most respected defense
against rejection. It is the male insurance policy. Success is
preventive medicine. But the characteristics it produces do not
always make the male lovable at home, or keep him alive for the
one he loves.
*See Chapter 3.
138 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
Self-Listening
Alan is making a presentation at a department meeting. Ralph
listens for a few seconds, "picks up the gist of what Alan is
saying, then, while Alan is still talking, Ralph is formulating in
his minds eye a contribution he can make the second Alan
pauses. As he rehearses his contribution, he may still listen to
139
140 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
plateaued out. But the very traits that were keeping her
respect were losing her love.
Mens incentives to self-listen extend beyond the work arena.
For example, Jeff reaches out to kiss Amanda for the firs*
time. Amanda's interested, but hes moving too quickly. So
she stays with the kiss for a few seconds, then carefully with
draws. To reduce Jeff's burden, Amanda starts the conversation
again.
As Amanda is talking, Jeff is running an inner dialogue: If I
try kissing her again immediately, while theres energy in the
air, maybe my persisting past her resistance will excite her. . . .
On the other hand, maybe Ill mess up my chances altogether.
Or maybe I should turn the stereo up, or turn it down, or
massage her feet, or rub her neck, or ask her a question, or
mention my last accomplishment
In the meantime. Amanda is still talking. Jeff hasnt heard
much of anything. Hes been listening to himself prepare his
next moveself-listening.
Why doesnt he just relax? Build some trust from which sex
can become meaningful? Or let Amanda return the kiss if and
when shes ready, rather than compulsively testing the waters?
Because, as I discussed in the last chapter, hes rarely been with
a woman who did initiate a kiss she had cut off. And, as
happened with Fran, if too much friendship time elapses, hes
afraid hell get the line about not wanting to spoil a friendship
with sex. But most important, as long as hes expected to take
the initiatives and therefore to risk rejection, the longer he
listens, the longer his period of potential rejection. The sooner
he has intercourse, the faster the period of potential rejection is
over.
Arc women better listeners? Overall, yes. but women also
self-listen in their own way. When I studied women in mixed
groups. I found that they often listened for a few seconds, picked
up the gist of what was being said, and then formed in their
minds a question they could ask while the conversation was in
process. If they were interested in a man in the group, or if there
was a man of influence in the group, they often asked the
question with eye contact on that man. Even if they already knew
the answer.
While men self-listen by problem solving or faultfinding,
women self-listen by pseudo-questioning.
. . . Why Can't Men Listen? 143
The Complainer
Dont complain too often.
Dont ask the listener questions (Tell me why you did
that?) if you want the listener to listen.
Ask the listener to listen. Tell the listener you have a
complaint and ask the listener if he or she is willing to
follow the steps below.
realized 1 had taken it for me. Thats when I had the dj vu. I
started employing whatever kicking ability I had to pass more
balls to Megan. By the end of the game we had lost. But
Megan had won. And therefore, so had I.
begin to live their parts at home. But behind the image often
hides a neurosis. For example, men professionally diagnosed as
neurotic cam 23 percent more than normal men.2 Dozens of
written and unwritten rules exacerbate a successful mans neuro
ses. No mens room ever features either a couch or a comfortable
chair. Coffee yes, couches no. And napsno, no, no. We can
drug up and drug down, but not lie down. Not if were on the
way up. And so when the children of a man on the way up take a
break, he tends to see them as lazy rather than well-paced.
Especially if they arc sons.
When Gary Hart was being discussed as a vice presidential
possibility after Mondale was nominated, he commented, I
would not make a good second man. 1 dont follow very well.
Many men, though, find themselves accepting positions for
which they are suited like a round peg in a square hole in
hopes of positioning themselves for two jobs down the road.
When men do this, studies show they are especially likely to
have spillover stressstress that spills over to the home
environment.
Many men I have worked with report themselves during these
periods as more critical than I want to be. . . . The kids get into
a little quarrel at the dinner table and I eat them up. We all leave
the table with indigestion. Other men confess, Its a tough
world out there, and when I see my kids being lazy, I cant stand
it. I criticize out of love, but Im overly critical.
Among the hundreds of womens groups Ive started, one of
the most common issues women deal with is self-concept. Al
most all the women with this problem also report having critical
fathers. Spillover stress makes many fathers far more critical and
stricter disciplinarians than they want to be. This seems espe
cially hard on daughters. Why? To a certain extent, sons can
take the criticism as role preparationthis is reinforced by what
boys do to each other all day in play groups. Girls, not preparing
themselves for toughness and criticism as part of their feminin
ity, tend to take it more personally.
With sons, the effect is often like that portrayed in East of
Eden. One son becomes the good boy, following in Dad's
footsteps or excelling in a different but compatible field. The
other son (James Dean), seeing he cannot compete, rebels. Nei
ther son is his own person: one imitates, the other reflexively
reacts against.
148 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
Item: Bobs son, Steve, has just gotten his first Din his
junior year in high school. He had hoped to get into the
University of Michigans honors program. Now, he fears, theres
no chance. Bob goes over to his son. He puts his arms around
him, brings his head gently to his shoulder, and tenderly allows
Steve the opportunity to cry.
I98J Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Women, then, are much less likely to have fears of the idea of
commitment; they are quite likely to feel ambiguous about the
actual man to whom they are committed.
than six hundred couples were asked, Do you love your spouse?
only 1 1 percent were able to respond with an unhesitating yes.4
Men are increasingly hesitant about commitment because when
they forfeit their primary fantasy they increasingly do so ir\
exchange for intimacy and love. Since the odds are almost 9 to 1
against their getting intimacy and love, they are hesitant. On top
of this, if a man is committing for love but is also successful, he
may wonder whether the woman has fallen in love or risen in
security.
Dow n arrow s m ean these reasons are less im p o rtan t than pre
viously; up arrow s in dicate increased im portance. "W o m e n s
In c o m e " is a new reason s o m e m en co m m it, but is not listed
because it was not previously a reason for a m an com m itting
to a w om an. As child ren be co m e less a p ro gram m ed assum p
tion of m ale m aturity, a m a n s need to find a m o th e r for his
c h ild re n " becom es secondary to fin d in g a w om an he loves
and then decidin g w h eth er or hot he w ants children. There is
less o f a need to look for a goo d m other; m ore o f a need to find
a g o o d w om an.
Couples married under two years have sex slightly more frequently; couples
married over ten years slightly less frequently (American Couples, pp. 19 5 - 196).
162 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
IN THOUSANDS MARfUED
H f ir l
f d o llar s cwwt mm)
*12 r- *21.380
21
20
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18
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IS NEVER-
WAAK
14 HMWD MAN
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13 WOMAN
11.957
n
11
MARRIED
9 MORAN
(tAAAANT
Ai
8 fwatH
7 S b .b 3 4
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5
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* ALL RACES, AGES 23 TO fe*. AVERAGE ANNUAL INCOMES
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Taken together, what the items reveal is that the more income
a woman makes, the less willing she is to commit. Which makes
her just like a manand therefore helps us understand why men
(who earn more) commit more cautiously. Item two reveals that
among lesbians the female primary fantasy of desiring someone
with more income and statusmarrying up is still the control
ling issue. The study found this an important factor in lesbians
having the highest breakup rate of any group investigatedhigher
than gay men and 400 percent higher than heterosexual couples.23
Once a woman is committed, income affects her decisions
about leaving in a way that is opposite from men. Men who earn
more are less likely to leaveor be left. As mentioned above, 84
percent of top male executives are married to their first wives,
compared with 53 percent of the total male population.24
So if women commit in part to benefit from someone elses
income and break commitment when that income is not forth
coming, is it mostly because it is in the nature of men to want
dominance? A look at gay men gives us some hints. Men in gay
relationships resent it if their partners do not contribute equally.25
Gay men, the same research shows, have no problem sharing
housework equally, keeping their homes clean, and preparing a
variety of good-quality meals.2
Men are much more likely to provide economically for women
in marriage than in cohabitation.27 And women are 40 percent
more likely than men to prefer marriage over cohabitation.28
Once married, though, both sexual quality29 and sexual fre
quency decrease.30
In brief, the greater the level of commitment, the more the
man supports the woman, the less frequent the sex, and the
172 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
poorer the quality of sex.* This occurs not because women are
tricky. Both sexes are doing the same thingfulfilling role
expectations. But the more a man fulfills the role expectations pf
commitment, the less he fulfills the role expectations of his
fantasy; the more a woman fulfills the role expectations of
commitment, the closer to her fantasy.
with the familiar. Which may be part of the reason sex between
married couples becomes almost taboo.
Few men understand why sex diminishes (the taboo is only
one reason), but they do sense something about the familiar that
makes sex less likely; they fear it will happen to them once they
become day-to-day familiar with, or commit to, a woman. Men
articulate this indirectlyby turning up their noses at station
wagons and eyeing the Porsche with envy.
If the marital incest taboo helps make familiar sex taboo, what
is it about the first vacation, shortly after a couple meets, that
makes sex so passionate? Take Orin and Hope, who made
passionate love twice a day in the Caribbean shortly after they
met, but who, when they returned to the Caribbean four years
later to renew their vows, were more concerned about the night
life and the quality of the hotel.
What creates this Caribbean passion that no longer exists after
commitment? In the Caribbean, Hope had the fantasy of commit
ment in the wings, which gave her a kind of permission to open
up. Orins fantasies of passion and frequency were nurtured by
Hopes openness. And Hope was a new lover for Orin; her
newness represented the variety of partners aspect of his
primary fantasy. In the Caribbean, Orins and Hopes primary
fantasies meshed, and what emerged was passionate sex.
*For a careful explanation o f why the double standard (men can have sex
more than women . . .) is a myth, see Chapter 8.
174 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
Craig was not able to put his finger on this cheapskate feeling
until a man in a mens group happened to describe an almost
identical scene. For Craig, it was like recalling a dream. He
remembered feeling like the boy who believed his mother when
she said, I dont want anything for my birthday. Craig was
not aware that an accumulation of mixed messages made him
suspicious that committing to Lois would mean taking care of
Lois, even though Lois was proud of her work and the indepen
dence it brought her.
Men who get in touch with their feelings begin to be able to
apply them to the contradictions they see around them. If they
are honest, they will confront the woman with these contradic
tions. Thats the price of men getting in touch with feelings. The
reward is that when the contradictions are even partially re
solved, the path to commitment out of love becomes that much
clearer.
The very real fear of commitment for many men who have had
children comes from the memory of their first wives becoming
childaholics, escaping from their husbands and the world through
176 WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE
their children. Some men feel children have the effect of forcing
them to distance themselves by having to become workaholics to
support them, making the home not his castle, but hers. As one
man put it, A mans home is his castle is bull; I came home
to my wifes rules. It was her castle, my mortgage.
Many men recalled that the biggest shift in their marriage
occurred when children arrived. The wife gets paid for intimacy
with the child. The husband loses pay when he takes time out for
intimacy. Intimacy, which is the job of the woman at home,
becomes a distraction from his job for a man. But intimacy is
what he committed for. So if he has already had children, the
thought of commitment to a second womans children can make
him wonder whether hell be forfeiting the very intimacy he
traded in his fantasies to attain. He experiences the intimacy
take-away.
The men who seem to experience the greatest intimacy take
away are those who were married to women who felt children
were part of a programsort of the next stage in her primary
fantasy. At first these men are unable to let themselves admit
they feel used. They feel replaced by the child just as the
Velveteen Rabbit felt replaced when the boy substituted it for the
newest toy in his developmental stage. Men react not by getting
in touch with these feelings, but rather by withdrawing; not by
renegotiating the balance between her juggling load and his
intensifying load, but by increasing his intensifying and paying
for her intimacy.
For a man, not a scrap of his primary fantasy of Playboy and
Penthouse is met by having to provide for a home with addi
tional rooms, higher utility bills, baby-sitters, cluttered floors,
and dirty dishes, with rejection by the children and a woman
who feels pulled between him and someone else thrown in. Only
if she and he arrange their relationship to prevent the intimacy
take-away will he find his main purpose for committing
intimacysatisfied. And she will find herself with an identity
beyond their children.
As Frank, who had two children and was considering marry
ing Judy, who had custody of her three children, half-joked,
Every time I say I love you to Judy, I think of seven
mouths. For Judy, commitment to Frank meant less responsi
bility for feeding four mouths. There are plenty of joys in being
a new parent. There is a great deal of learning. Frank loved
Judys children. They were just not what he set out looking for.
Why Are Men So Afraid o f Com m itm ent? 177
1983 Universal Pirss Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights raerved.
devotion came when he protected her from those fears; the man
who provided protection can expect her objectification to be as
strong when the protection stops as her devotion was deep when
the protection was provided.
Devotion in exchange for financial support disappears when
financial support disappears. How can a man sense whether a
woman will react that way? A hint comes in a survey of women
marned to doctors published in MedicallMrs., which indicates
that the doctors wives, by their own evaluation, wanted security
from marriage more than anything else. According to Colette
Dowling in The Cinderella Complex, the conflict and hostility
they exhibited toward the men who provide them with all this
security is stunning to behold,33 yet many of these wives were
considered devoted.
If we apply the same understanding to women who fear rejec
tion by the world as we have for men who fear sexual rejection
( it hurts less to be rejected by an object than by a full human
being ) we can gain some feeling for the immense fear behind
the womans sudden objectification. Her devotion was not really
to him, but rather to his commitment. The shift after commit
ment is merely a shift in objectification.
How can a man distinguish devotion out of fear from devotion
out of love? If a woman can support herself financially and is not
attached to the idea of marriage, it is a good bet she is devoted
out of love. A man cannot tell whether a woman is in love with
him or his security blanket until she is financially and psycholog
ically independent enough to leave.34 Until a woman has learned
how to leave, even she cannot be sure she has learned to love.
tive ones, and waited for them to call him and offer to take him
out and take sexual initiatives. Might he perceive a Great
American Woman Shortage ?
MEN:
A g u id e t o s h a v in g a m a n
v Y h a l.r.^ , re !o r vfr'/.'herentai<.etthemi
'<''vhelhe! to k e e p ffie n W h a ! !o c a l! to s p d t a
by Stepbanie
S tep han ie Brush, M en : An O w n
e r's M a n u a l (N ew York: Sim on &
S chuster/Linden Press, 198 4 )
189
190 THE NEW SEXISM
WOMEN:
AN OWNER'S MANUAL
by George Brush
Original cover.
The N ew Sexism 191
i. m b 9 n u m
Authors role reversal
without the act. We would have heard how women were now
sexually liberated and initiating.
Have women developed a deep-seated anger toward men? Yes.
I mentioned above how that anger at men is especially strong in
the fantasy-not-yet-fulfilled magazines like New Woman, Woman,
Playgirl, Ms., and Cosmo. Below is one example from Cosmo,
the best-selling magazine in the fantasty-not-yet-fullfilled category.
"Are you trying to be macho o r "You haven't said much. Are you
just stupid?" trying to be feminine or just stupid?"
Woman, February 1985 Authors role reversal
The N ew Sexism 197
woman felt not just rejection from a man; the rejection tapped
into her fear that she would never achieve her primary fantasy.
Are men any better when their primary fantasy is rejected? No.
Which is why putdowns of women and violence against women
are so often found in pornographywhose readers often feel
their primary fantasy is not yet fulfilled. Similarly, when the
female primary fantasy is threatened (as with the man who flirts,
as shown earlier in the illustration from the book No Bad Men
[page 191]), we see the man with a knife in his stomach.
Suppose a woman constantly rejects men but does not wish to
look at her fear of intimacy? How might she avoid looking at her
fear? She can group all men into categories, making each into a
different type of loser. Heres one example: the back cover of the
book No Bad Men:
HUMOR Z5502 M.9S
C A N A D A *
how to u co o m zB y o u * h a jt b b u x d
One cru cial asp ect of th e Lovehouse train in g m ethod la electing the
breed of m an that' rig h t for you. H ere is a am ple of a quiz
th a t will help you determ ine w hat category of m an you are dealing with:
You go to a party He Imm ediately.
(a) S tarts eyeing o th e r women.
(b) S tarts eyeing o ther men.
fe lls approached by people who want
h is advice on the atoch m a rk et
(d) Is ask ed to tell som e funny jo k e *
everybody loves h is se n s e o fh u m o c
(e) Is ask ed to leave.
If your
(A) YOU HAVE A VOLF.
() YOU HAVE A
This one will never give up
th e h u o t. he may never learn POO O U.
the com m and Down, boy." T hese have their
uaca. b u t don't
expect them to learn
passionate bedroom trie
(C) YOU HAVE A
QBEAT DAUB
Reserved, fD) YOU HAVE CAUGHT A
well-bred, and T .U B tA I D .
self-disciplined. He la big-hearted
th is m an l proud and cuddly, b u t ten d s
of th e fact th a t be to leave th e toilet seat
hides his em otions. up even after
ea rn e st training.
NOBADMEN
o-Mse-assoi-3
Barbara Lovehouse, Ato Bad Men, back cover
The N ew Sexism 199
"you
' ' J HEEL!
devoted to cards that categorized men and put down men. The
bookstore buyer volunteered that it was her best-selling group of
cards. Here is one of the cards:
WB
RSAIkOSTOeAy#
mu sHwieir-
MainLine Cards
W hy smart women
make dumb choices
By Nancl Hellmlch
USA TODAY
In Smart Women, the au
thors separate these men Into
ty p e of "rascals":
The Don Juan. Women
consider him challenging and
exciting. He m a k e a woman
feel cherished for a time, but
eventually g o e off to make an
other conquest
The Elusive Lover. He
has the ability to create and
somehow maintain a level of
promise and hope, but he nev
er c o m e through. He demands
his freedom while holding out
a vague promise for the future.
The M arried Rat. He pos
s e s s the critical element for
Intrigue: He Is off limits. He
prom ise to leave his wife, but
has no intention of doing so.
B eside the "rascals," there
are other ty p e who make
women want to scream.
The Gam . His tough mys
tique covers up a basically self
ish, withholding and guarded
nature. The woman thinks he Is
the strong silent type who Just
needs to be brought out, but
she's never able to penetrate
his shell.
The P ie u d o -L lb e ra te d
Male. Disarmingly attractive
to women, he seems sensitive
and vulnerable, but actually he
uses his new freedom to whine
about his problems.
The P erp etu al Adolea-
cenL He seems charming but
actually has shallow views and
Interactions with women.
The Walking Wounded.
R e ce n tly s e p a ra te d or d i
vorced, this man Is still recov
ering from the hurt bltterne
and rejection, and his self-pity
eventually becomes tedious.
books have many valid points. The point is that they cannot be
sold on that basis. When they are, as with Mirror, Mirror, they
fail.
Peter Pan
In the mid-eighties, books that criticize men for not committing,
like Barbara Ehrenreichs The Hearts of Men: The American
Dream and the Flight from Commitment and Dan Kileys The
Peter Pan Syndrome, have appealed to both academics and lay
persons. Imagine how reverse titles would have been received:
The Hearts of Women: The American Dream and Womens
Flight from Earning a Living. Peter Pan was discussed in the
eighties as a man who had never committed and, therefore, never
grown up that is, he failed to fulfill the female primary fantasy
of better homes and gardens. What would an equivalent
self-improvement ad look like if it criticized women for not
fulfilling the male primary fantasy of bbing a woman who de
sired him sexually?
m a n i n y o u r lif e
w ho has nevar
g ro w n up?
wealth, but enough wealth and control over her own life to have
sex on her own terms. The dilemma is that the fantasy has
expanded faster than has womens preparation to provide it for
themselves. The ad appeals to the pull between the traditional
part of many women, which wants a man to provide success, and
the independent part, which fantasizes control over her own
sexuality, his sexuality, and even him. The traditional part of her
is so furious at him for not providing success and sweeping her
away (hence the anger in the independent women magazines)
that his meager gifts must be met with her I wish he were
dead fantasy.
N e w W om an, July 1 9 8 4
"Ifshe doesn 7 like your competitive, insensitive manner let HER support the family."
1983 Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
' Afte r my break up with Bill. I told m yself there's plenty o f other fish in the
sea. But so fa r all I've found are sharks, octopuses and helpless guppies!
Woman, December 1984
In these cartoons, the men obviously want the women, and yet
the women are still rejecting the men. Why? Because each man
is treating the w om an in a w ay that indicates to the w om an he
wants her f o r his fan tasy but not f o r hers. A woman who gets
treated this way feels powerless; after all, she needs a man
somehow, somewherebut damn it if she is going to be treated
like a piece of meat. Shed rather have self-respect than that.
To himself, a mans lines feel like the lines of a salesperson.
As a salesperson, he feels in the powerless position. It is the
person in the power position who can do the put-down. ( I dont
remember your products name, but the claim is familiar. ) The
more attractive the woman, the more likely she is to not even
give him the time of day.
By looking at examples in which both sexes give lines we can
tell when both sexes are feeling powerless. The men in the
cartoons are giving lines prior to sex. The power begins to
switch after sex, and the lines start to become hers: I dont
usually do this. The closer we come to commitment, the more
likely a woman who fears not getting a man to commit may give
a line like No woman will ever be able to love you the way I
The N ew Sexism 215
do. Both are giving lines when they fear not getting their
primary fantasy. Their lines are promises designed to tap into the
others real needs. When we give lines, we promise what we
perceive as the other persons real needsor their Achilles
heels. When a woman says No woman will ever be able to love
you the way I do, she is unwittingly recognizing how much a
man commits in order to get love.
An outgrowth of male line-giving is male bragging, the equiv
alent of female makeup. Both are attempts to present a bit more
than a person has. Both male lines and female makeup are
compensations for feelings of powerlessness.
an Italian man, you know how they are! Mario Cuomo objected
to her commentbecause it referred derogatorily to Italians, not
because it was derogatory toward men. Had Mondale or Reagan
ever said, If you live with an Italian woman, you know how
they are, the comment would have been seen as both an ethnic
slur and a sexist slur. Mondale or Reagan would have suffered.
A cartoon is not very distant from reality.
Underneath, though, the cartoon hurts women as much as
men. The underlying message to a woman is that she cannot
have intimacy with a man and career goals. We shall see below
why this is a false dichotomy.
Its you I'm crazy about, Gloria. The fa c t that you make $30,000 a year is
just frosting on the cake.''
W h y i s i t th a t as w om en becom e successful,
the m en in th eir lives turn into w h in y
dorks who fo r g e t their ow n a m b itio n s?
P la y g irl, Decem ber 1981
The N ew Sexism 219
Not only does Daddy know less than Mommy, but less than
child. No, not exactly. Less than female child. Among the
hundreds of cartoon- i looked at in the womens magazines, qjl
the put-downs ot men by children came from female children.
As with the cartoon that shows a girl selling lemonade and
telling a man passing her that he was threatened by a successful
career woman.
complex.'"
Author's role reversal
Take five seconds to let the images run through the imagina
tion. What were Don and her daughter doing when she returned?
If the images involve some version of Dons touching Carrie
sexually, think of what that says about the trust level that is built
into our psyches about men and male sexuality. Every newspaper
article about incest in the past ten years has increased our
224 THE NEW SEXISM
Respect to Suspect
In 1970, a person who spent his or her life earning a Ph.D.,
attending a decade of staff meetings, helping female and male
students on doctoral dissertations and masters theses, spending
evenings and weekends preparing articles for publication in the
most competitive journals, and spending four summers in a row
writing and rewriting a book, might earn respectas long as she
The N ew Sexism 225
T h re w things 3 5
Pushed or shoved 11 8
Hit o r slapped 5 5
Kicked or hit with fist 2 3
Hit with som ething 2 3
Threatened with knife or gun 0.4 0.6
Used knife o r gun 0.3 0.1
Used any violence 12 12
This study w as conductsd w ith 2,143 parsons.
Source: S uzanns Steinm etz, Victimology, vol. 2 ,1 9 7 7 -1 9 7 8 ,
Num bers 3 - 4 , pp. 4 9 9 -5 0 9 .
The N ew Sexism 227
ers all over the country cheered wildly for the rest of the movie
as Bronson shot mugger after mugger in revenge. The energy
from the outrage was strong enough to sustain an entire movie.
The producers were aware that they could not sustain this level
of audience outrage by opening the movie with a scene of a
mugger killing a man.
In non-horror films, women are not killed left and right, as
men are in war films and westerns. In fact, one way of predict
ing the outcome of all but three or four non-horror movies is that
if the life of a woman w ho has appeared in m ore than nvo scenes
is threatened, we can safely predict she will not be murdered or
shot. With a few exceptions, a womans murder takes place in
the opening scene in nonhorror films, before we can get to know
her as a woman. Such is not the case with male characters. As
with Alexis of D ynasty versus Bobby Ewing and J. R. of D a lla s ,
the excitement is women being threatened, but men being m urdered
or shot. When men are shot, it is not horror, but excitem ent
worthy of bumper stickers and guessing games (as in Who Shot
J. R.? ).
The most important part of this difference is that when women
are killed, they are recognizable as victims. When men are
killed, they appear to deserve it. After all, we say, the men are
killing each other in war. We do not acknowledge how they are
victimized by being assigned the role of protector and hero in
war films, westerns, or space movies. W e p ro tect women by not
assigning them roles in which they must k ill each o th e r; in the
process we make violence a g ain st th e ir lives m ore a p p allin g than
violence against m ens lives.
Once we are more shocked by violence against women it
becomes easy for hundreds of researchers, who would ordinarily
know better, to measure the amount of violence against each
sex by looking at police reports of those who select themselves
out to complain.
When we block ourselves from asking questions we are other
wise trained to ask, we know the subconscious is operating.
Could it be we have an investment in viewing women as victims
and men as perpetrators? If someone protested that the Who
Shot J. R . craze is the glorification of violence against men,
would he or she be told to go water some pansies?
The N ew Sexism 229
*The film received an A. C. Nielson rating of 36.2. higher than the World
Series for the same week.
tFlorida public defender Pat McGuiness.
230 THE NEW SEXISM
*For the full quiz and Haywards other writings, write M ens Rights, P.O.
Box 163180, Sacramento, CA 95816.
232 THE NEW SEXISM
Consciousness Balancing
Some months ago I was working in an office at the sociology
department of the University of California at San Diego. The
departments newsletter crossed my desk. 28 A female department
worker had filled in eleven examples of sexism in the blank
space at the end of a page. The observations of the womens
movement were so assimilated that she had no fear of stirring
controversy or losing her job by presenting them without present
ing the other side. Perhaps neither to her nor to anyone else in
the department was another side even possible. In the table
opposite some of the most potent of her examples are listed on the
left, and on the right some examples of the New Sexism that
would have resulted in consciousness balancing.
The N ew Sexism 233
CONSCIOUSNESS BALANCING
Traditional Sexism The New Sexism
Comic Relief
To give ourselves some comic relief my assistant and I reviewed
one thousand cartoon strips in 1985 issues of the Washington
234 THE NEW SEXISM
1. Dependent wife.
2. Wife realizes men oppress her.
3. Woman leaves husband, has nothing to do with men.
4. Woman meets Mr. Wonderful.
5. Even Mr. Wonderful is a jerk. Implication: All men are
jerks.
more romance novels and watch more television than men during
eveiy time category11; whose members earn one-third what white
men earn and outspend them for all personal items combined.1*
Women are the only minority group to systematically grow up
having a class of workers (called fathers) in the field working for
them; they are the only minority group that is a majority.
Does this mean women have more power than men? No. It
does mean the sexes, unlike the classes, have approximately
equal numbers of people bom into privileged and oppressive
conditions. It is in the interests of both sexes to hear the other
sexs experience of powerlessness.
8
Why Did the Sexual
Revolution Come and Go
So Quickly?
During the late seventies and early eighties, the focus of feminist
protest shifted. At first feminism was associated with sexual
freedom. Germaine Greer talked about having sex with your
local cabdriver. By 1984 Greers Sex and Destiny' was advocat
ing abstinence and celibacy. By the mid-eighties, U.S. govern
ment brochures, socialist feminists, the Moral Majority, and Dr.
Joyce Brothers all agreed on only one thingwomen should
hold back more on.sex. As in the old sex.
1984 Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
This was not womens fault. If, from an early age and for
many generations, men had been told they could get their dinners
Why Did the Sexual Revolution Com e and Go So Quickly? 239
paid for by looking good, being supportive, and not being too
sexually free, men would be more supportive and less sexually
free. Traditionally, withholding sex until security was guaranteed
had worked as a strategy. As womens economic independence
was seen to be economic insecurity, there was a quick shift back
to a more conservative sexuality.
Whether the development was conscious or unconscious, coinci
dental or not, as soon as it became apparent that sexual freedom
was not coming hand in hand with economic freedom, it was
questioned. Erica Jong went from writing about sex with strange
men on Amtrak trains to warning against sex without commitment.
The Moral Majority, meantime, had never had any trouble
keeping sex and commitment linked via God and morality. Femi
nists dumped the morality rationale; instead they developed a
distrust-of-male-sexuality attitude, which was called upon as a
replacement for morality as the rationale for shifting back to a
more conservative sexuality prior to commitment.
The issues of the late seventies and eighties increasingly be
came distrust-male-sexuality issues: protests of pornography, pros
titution, sexual harassment, rape, child molestation, and incest.
This distrust allowed a woman to return to the position in which
a man had to prove trust before she would be sexual. It also
created an uneasy alliance between the religious fundamentalists
and feminists. Both groupswith different reasonshad arrived
at the same role for female sex as the lead article in Cosmopolitan:
Make Him Earn It.
By the 1980s, the new sexism and distrust male sexuality
messages combined so effectively that even magazines like
Glamourla could advocate female sexuality in ways they would
never advocate male sexuality. For example, Glamour's Sexual
Pleasures of Childbirth article explains how when mothers
breast-feed babies, mothers should experience the childs suck
ing motions in a sexual manner and achieve orgasms from the
contact of her nipples with the childs mouth and lips. Yet, in the
mid-eighties incest is often defined as any contact with a child in
which a man has sexual feelings.
A child needs both breast-feeding and bathing, but male par
ents were being arrested on the mere accusation they had touched
a child genitally for too long when bathing itparticularly if
the child was a daughter. In some areas, doctors literally hooked
the fathers penis up to a machine and showed him pictures of a
female child while the machine registered whether these pictures
240 THE NEW SEXISM
" / didn't mean actually living; together, Mitzi; u/ia/ / had in mind was
more like playing house from time to time."
New Woman, March 1985
I would not be so concerned about the old sex and the new
sexism if they did not combine with sex roles to produce many
more problems than they solve. The combination of the old sex,
the new sexism, and sex roles creates a six-stage cycle. Lets
look at that cycle with an emphasis on the role of the old sex.
ever reason, those disgusting men want her dirty genitals. She
learns she has possession over something both dirty and valuable.
Is there a way to avoid appearing dirty? Yes. Assign th^
responsibility for the dirt to someone else. Whichever sex is
assigned the responsibility for the dirt will not be trusted. So
Stages 2 and 3, Initiating sex is mens responsibility and
Men cannot be trusted, go hand in hand.
No way, Joshand-holding
just leads to the hard stuff!"
N e w W om an, July 1984
more likely to run a cartoon saying, Dont play house with her.
. . . youll never get into the bedroom.
The book No Good Men (see cartoon below) illustrates how
we ask men to initiate, leading to men activating their sexuality
(a prerequisite to initiating), leading to distrusting men as poten
tial rapists:
WOMEN
HATE .
ABOUT 1
MEN
T h r Im t * th fall up, thy |
hog tha o o r a , thay n m r call
w h a n th* 7 u y thay will, thay
U ha p h o n a call* du rin g m b 1
and... 5
WHAT
MEN
HATE
ABOUT
WOMEN
71*9 leave th e toilet
s e a t down, they expect
me to call, they t i e aepirtr*
before sex and fantasize
prsgnancy after
For example: 91 percent o f American men do not feel love is necessary for
good sex. This statistic is taken from Anthony Pietropinto and Jacqueline
Simenauers Beyond the M ale Myth (New York: Signet, 1977), p. 230.
250 THE NEW SEXISM
more its articles and cartoons berate men for poor performance.
Note the pressure in the following cartoon.
u/AKP
"Oh nothing. Its ju st that you were better
as a fa n ta sy.
Playgirl, D e c e m b e r 198 2
Id like to go all the way with Ronald, but he can never last that long."
C o s m o p o lita n , Septem ber 1984, p. 356b
Your secretariat skills are perfect. How are you with a whip?
P la y g irl, July 1983
No Good Men, p. 8
competition the enemy, a need that arose mostly for women who
were not being economically provided for by men. It occurred at
a point in history when women were getting divorces ftom men
and therefore men as their economic support system suddenfy
became men the major competitor.
267
268 THE NEW SEXISM
Q: Dont many men really love their work more than their
family?
WF: Thats a tough question, because of the inseparabilit}-
for men of success at work and feeling loved by a
woman. And then, as a couple has children, the mans
intensifying act pays him to intensify his commitment
away from home so he can pay her to love the children
at home. Studies that find men love their work more
than their family are treating the two as if they were
separable. For men with families, commitment to work
is rarely separable from commitment to family. The
exception is the rare family in which both parents share
total responsibility for making an equal contribution to
all expensesfrom mortgages to college education. And
they commit themselves to that equal sharing no matter
how unpleasant the work gets. Then a womans fragile
ego will be connected to the workplace almost as much
as a mans is.
WF: They do. But have we ever seen two women go out on
a first social occasion, and say who earns more?
when the check comes? If a woman doesnt ask this
question of a woman, why should she of a man? As a
rule of thumb, unless a woman is treating the issue of
pay with a man just as she would with a given woman,
we have to ask exactly what is the man paying for?
But more important, every time a woman assumes a
man will pay (on the first social occasion, that is) she
reinforces the male image of the type of job he needs to
keep to earn money to take out women. The assumption
that he will pay puts pressure on him and takes it off
her. She contributes to the mentality that leads to women
earning less than men, and to men feeling that the more
they earn, the more they can take out women, and the
more desirable a woman they can take out (buy).
This is all part of what I mean when I say male
power is men earning their way to equality with women.
might not the other woman offer to pay for her? Yet if a
man did that, would she offer to pay for him (the first
time)? If not, what is the man paying for? *
Q: Of course.
WF: To get your juices flowing! Just as the woman wears a
low-cut dress to get his juices flowing with the implicit
promise of the rest of herif only he plays it right. His
verbal promises are part of what he uses to get her
juices flowing by holding out the possibility of the rest
280 THE NEW SEXISM
See Part 5.
PA RT 5
REWEAVING
MASCULINITY
Should I Question My
Motivations for Changing Him?
Anyonewoman or manwho wishes to change another person
has to ask first whether the desire to change the other is basically
a desire to reinforce the he or she needs helpIm the better
one syndrome. When missionaries want to save natives, the
missionaries reinforce the rightness of their own ways of looking
at the world. They reinforce their specialnessthe natives
become conversion objects. The underlying (or is it overlying?)
assumption of the missionary position is superiority. Yet if the
missionaries had not needed the "fix of feeling superior, they
may never have focused their energies on changing the native.
Which is why when were feeling badly about ourselves, and
need a superiority fix, we criticize others. And later, when
were feeling better, the criticism fades.
The focus on wishing a man would change can become so
intent it masks the possibility that the womans underlying my
thology has not changedshe is playing the role of wanting to
be saved by a man who does it better or makes it better. She may
not yet have escaped from the most traditional assumption that
the man is responsible, and therefore to blame. She may not
have escaped the myth that shes helpless, that he should have
been the savior, but hes messed it up along the way.
What motivation needs to be behind change? Think for a
moment about the point in a relationship in which a person feels
most open to changing. Usually, its either at the beginning,
when a person feels most loved, and hopes that by changing she
or he will secure that love forever, or at the endwhen he or she
is afraid of losing love. In both cases a person needs to feel the
potential for love to be motivated to change; otherwise there's
285
286 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Every virtue, taken to the extreme, becomes a vice. For the past
twenty years 1 have critiqued traditional masculinity because
masculinity has been taken to the extreme. And taken to the
extreme it creates anxiety, homicide, rape, war, and suicide; not
taken to the extreme it has many virtues not to be tossed out with
the bathwater.
Praise of men is an endangered species. But the good about
men is not. And when something good is being endangered it
needs special attention. And so, for a rare moment in recent
history, here is special attention to whats good about male
socialization. Ill start with a tongue-in-cheek poem I wrote for
the occasion. Imagine a woman saying it.
Our first reaction to this poem might be that these are all male
stereotypes. A closer look reveals that they are also, for the most
part, verifiable descriptions of male as opposed to female reality,
which can help us see what stereotypes really arc. Stereotypes
What I Love Most about Men 289
are reflections of the need to get approval oy oenaving certain
ways or having certain attitudes. Those who say, Oh, thats a
stereotype, by which they mean either Dont pay any atten
tion to it, its not true or It doesnt match my egalitarian
desire for the world; therefore discount it are encouraging
themselves to ignore reality. Instead we should ask a different set
of questions. First, is it true? Second, if it is, and if we dont like
the outcome, how do we change ourselves so we can change the
result?
Throughout this chapter, the female reader will see that she
has many of these positive characteristics of male socialization,
such as being giving. She may have these traits within the
framework of female socialization (being giving to her family) or
within the framework of male socialization (giving at work so
she can provide for her family). Nothing about mens socializa
tion is strong enough to prevent any individual woman from
attaining any of the characteristics that men are socialized to
have. The value of looking at the best and worst about men is
understanding mens pressures. Socialization is pressure. Men
are neither better nor worse than womenboth sexes respond to
the pressures that are aimed at them. In this way we are all
equal.
One of the fascinating parts about men is our tendency to
subject ourselves to war, physical abuse, and psychological abuse
and call it power. The ability to be totally out of control while
continuing to view ourselves as the ones with the power can have
certain advantages to a woman. As expressed in this poem:
One-Night Stand
Giving/Generosity
Why do we think of women as giving of themselves and men as
giving gifts? Because womens socialization teaches direct
givingas listening nurturers, cooks of mens meals, and doing
more of his wash than he does of hers. He may give by working
in a coal mine and contracting black lung so his child can attend
college as he never could, but his giving is done at the mine
where we dont see it. The result of his giving is a check. With
womens giving we appreciate more than'the result, we appreci
ate the process: we see her cook the meal, serve it, and usually
clean it up. We dont see him wading through water in a dark
and damp mine shaft, or driving a truck at 2 a m . on his fourth
cup of coffee, behind schedule in traffic and with no time to nap.
We see him at home withdrawing from the coffee.
He may spend much of his life earning money to finance a
home his wife fell in love with, but we dont think of him as
giving when hes away from home nearly as much as we think of
her as giving when she cleans up his dishes.
Sometimes a mans giving is reflexive and role-based, such as
when he reflexively picks up a tab at a restaurant. We forget this
is also giving: fifty dollars for dinner and drinks may represent a
days work in after-tax income. Theater tickets, gas, and babysitters
are another days work. We dont think of his picking up these
tabs as being as giving as when a woman spends two days
preparing a special meal for him. Both forms of giving are
role-based; hers are just more direct.
Mens driving cars is also role-based, and therefore we tend to
discount the giving involved when a man and woman are both
high and exhausted after a party and he reflexively takes the
drivers seat and she the passenger seat. We forget that mens
one less layer of fat means men are more likely to hit the wall
or to suddenly run out be exhausted and colderbecause
What I Love Most about Men 291
they have fewer reserves of fat to feed off. Yet men never use
this as an excuse not to drive. His giving by driving may be
role-based, but that is the pointhis role stimulates this type of
giving. When Ted got arrested for drunk driving his family
looked down on him. No one considered Ted as a giving person
because he drove when he and his wife both had drunk too
much.
Every study of executive women has uncovered the generosity
(although it is rarely worded this way) of the man behind the
woman the male mentor. Like parents, mentors are often not
only not appreciated but even rebelled against. Which is under
standable. Women, flexing their desire to feel independent after
years of not feeling that way, are unlikely to call attention to a
man who helped them, which would reinforce the perception of
them as a woman who is just dependent on men. The willingness
of the male mentor to keep giving despite little recognition can
be seen, in part, as generosity.
Men tend to give reflexively in little ways. When I lived in
New York and occasionally took cabs, a cabbie would some
times ask me what I do. When Id explain that I was researching
male-female relations, more than a few volunteered their obser
vations about the difference between the way women and men
paid for cabs when there were two or three women together as
opposed to two or three men together. With men, each guy
volunteers to pay the full amount; with the ladies, they divide the
fare by two or threeright down to the penny; and then, as an
afterthought, remember the tip, debate about what they usually
give for a tip, and then divide thatalso to the penny.
Fairness
The best thing emerging from sports, games, work rules, win
ning, and losing is fairness. Not necessarily honestyfairness.
In Little League, when I trapped a ball in my glove just after a
bounce, the umpire credited me with catching a fly. I volun
teered to the umpire that I hadnt. The umpire, embarrassed,
changed the decision. The angry coach bawled me out. The other
coach bawled out my coach for bawling me out. They disagreed
on honesty. But neither would have disagreed with the fairness
of a neutral umpire making the decision.
Male socialization teaches the value of a careful system of
rules, within which anyone can work to gain advantage, and
292 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Nurturing
Carl wasnt great at expressing feelings. And he didnt under
stand fully that sometimes Cindy just needed a listening ear. His
way of supporting her was to volunteer to help Cindy with the
problem that was making her upset. For Carl, taking Cindy
seriously meant taking Cindys problem seriously, and taking
Cindys problem seriously meant trying to find a solution. To
him this was an act of love. Anything less, like just standing
around when she was hurting, was an act of cruelty. If Cindys
bleeding, hed say, find a solution. . . . Dont just stand
there with that sickening supportive smile on your face while the
woman I love is bleeding to death! Solutions are male nurturance.
The other two forms of male nurturance are not usually thought
of as nurturance. The first actually emerges from what men do
badly: expressing feelings. One good thing comes out of mens
expressing fewer feelings: there is more air timefor women to
express theirs. Since we all feel time to express feelings is
nurturing, lets appreciate how nurturing its been not to have
had that time taken up.*
The second type of nurturing that is not referred to as nurtur
ing can be appreciated most by women like Fay. Fay was one of
45 percent of women who went directly from the nurturance of
her parents to the nurturance of her husband.1 Like her parents,
Gregory nurtured by offering a security blanket in which Fay
could choose among a wide range of options. Fay sensed that
Greg loved her so deeply that his encouragement of her, no
matter whether she chose to work part-time, full-time, or have
Better listening would, of course, lead to less air time needed for
everyone.
What I Love M ost about Men 293
Leadership
Accusations that men have the power have appeared more
frequently in the past decile and a half than appreciation for
the billions of hours sacrificed by men to give themselves the
leadership training to get that power. Or the benefits of the
leadership itself. For example, few articles explain how male
socialization has trained millions of leaders to lead thousands
of businesses that are now providing millions of women with
opportunities for leadership that might not exist were it not for
male leadership.
294 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Outrageousness
While women are socialized to get male attention by being
good girls or not offending male egos, men are being social
ized to get female attention by standing out. One way a man can
stand out is to be outrageous. The best part of outrageousness is
the barriers it breaks to allow all of us more freedom to experi
ment with discovering more of ourselves. The Beatles hair,
considered outrageous at the time, permitted a generation to
experiment with their hair; Elvis the Pelvis allowed a generation
to experiment with their sexual selves; the Wright Brothers were
told it was scientifically impossible to flyand suicidal to try;
and Salvador Dali, Picasso, and Copernicus looked at the world
in ways considered outrageous in their time; in retrospect, we
can see that they freed us to live in it in a way we could not have
dreamed of before.
*
Ego Strength
When women reevaluate what goes wrong in a relationship the
unspoken assumption is that this takes ego strength. When men
compete fiercely to be number one, we see it as a reflection of
their fragile egos (which it can be) and call it strategizing, rather
than recognizing the ego strength required to conduct a self
reevaluation immediately after a loss. A man needs to ask.
What I Love Most about Men 295
were slowly learning there are few inherently bad or good per
sons. but that everyone takes on roles.
My woman friend Anne describes a court scene between her
lawyer and the lawyer of her former husband. "They both called 1
the evidence of the other lousy, and each others preparation
incompetent. In public. Then the judge offered the decision. A
second later, my lawyer yelled across the courtroom, Hey. Bill,
how about some tennis Saturday?
We see this separation even when an entire career is at stake.
George Bush attacked Ronald Reagans policies as voodoo eco
nomics in July 1980; in August 1980, Reagan offered Bush the
vice presidential nomination. The best part of the intensity of
male competition is insight into the game of lifea philosophi
cal distance allowing men to separate the roles they play from
their friendships. Allowing for the gentleness of judgment that
comes when we experience in our own lives that "Where I stand
depends on where I sit. The man who does not separate the
issue from the friendship soon finds enemies on his way up the
ladder.
To Express Anger
"One minute we were shouting and calling each other names. A
minute later we were concentrating on the next play. The male
tendency to take sports seriously combined with the willingness
to express feelings intensely leads many adult men to say, "I
lose my temper for a minute, then its done with. The positive
side of male anger is the quick, intense release of emotions, with
the subsequent calm that follows the storm. If the intensity is
understood, and not exacerbated, grudges are rarely held. The
intensity, like all powerful energy, can be harnessedand chan
neled into powerful lovemaking.
Self-Sufficiency
We dont call men career men, because the word career is
built into the word man. Self-sufficiency is built into masculin
ity. I can remember a prerequisite to becoming a second-class
Boy Scout was being dumped on the shores of the icy Hudson
River. With the evening turning dark, I was told to fix myself
dinner in the snow. There was a catch. I had to dig up branches
from the snow and start my fire without paper and with only two
matches. Each time I used up two matches without starting a
fire, the Scoutmaster told me to bury the branches back into the
snow and start over again. I cheated a little (I was bad at
counting matches), but the lesson in self-sufficiency was clear.
Most male self-sufficiency messages are not so direct; they are
implicit. Implicit in the imagery of Superman and the man on the
white horse is self-sufficiency. Male socialization is an overdose
in self-sufficiency. There are no fairy tales of a princess on a
white horse finding a male Sleeping Beauty and sweeping him
off to a castle; no fairy tales glorifying a man who is not
self-sufficient. When the going gets tough, he doesnt talk it
through, he gets going.
How do these fairy tales translate into reality? Liberation has
been defined as giving women the right to choose : to choose
the option of being at home or being at work. Men do not learn
they have the right to choose to be at home. That would imply
someone else would have to take care of him at home. A man
doesnt learn to expect that. He learns, instead, The world
doesnt owe you a living. Self-sufficiency implies earning
rights. The right to choose, he learns, comes from choosing, for
example, to take a job that pays a lot so he has more choices
when he is away from the job. As a result of a mans training to
take care of himself, millions of women have been freer to look
at their own valuesand to criticize menthan they would be if
they had to support them.
%
Self-Starting
If a man is in a bar feeling insecure, and hes interested in a
woman who is talking to someone else, he learns that if he
cannot self-start nothing will happen. If he feels underpaid on his
job or undervalued in his position, he doesnt feel he has a right
to better pay or a better position unless he makes himself no
300 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Risk Taking
The male socialization to take risks on the playing field prepares
a man to take risks investing in stocks, businesses, and conglom
erates. To invest in his career with years of training, and then
extra training. A plastic surgeon may have risked from age five
to thirty-five as a student or part-time student, underpaid and
overworked, in order, during the second half of his life, to be
able to earn a half million dollars a year.
James Joyce received 200 rejections before he got one accep
tance for publication. George Washington risked his life in nu
merous battles and lost most of them as did Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Winston Churchill risked and lost numerous elections. Thomas
Edison failed at dozens of inventions, and Ty Cobb, one of
baseballs greatest base-stealers, was also one of the most tagged-
out baseball players of all time. Babe Ruth was a home-run
king because he risked being a strike-out king.
On numerous levels, male socialization teaches men to risk a
lot and be willing to fail a lotand all for the hope of being
rewarded a lot. (Conversely, if he doesnt risk, he doesnt expect
the rewards.) If he survives, he will then be able to provide a
security for his wife and children that he never had for himself.
To Challenge Authority
Although Myron and I debated values as peers, Walter OConner
and I took our tentatively sorted-out values and challenged our
parents, relatives, and even Sunday school teachers. We would
challenge our Sunday school teacher with our questions about
God, or about whether people should be allowed to be nude in
public. God created humans, not clothes, wed say. No.
the clothed Sunday school teacher responded, God created
modesty to punish Adam and Eve for disobedience. Whatever
the real answer, the class accepted the challenge from us boys. If
a girl had questioned whether clothes were Gods invention, all
What I Love Most about M en 301
To Invent
In the process of sorting out values and challenging authority, we
occasionally stumbled on ideas we thought were original. They
were rarely, if ever, original, but that made little difference we
were learning how to invent.
To Develop Identity
The pressure on men to be more than self-sufficient, which
forced them to take risks and self-start, to sort out their values
quickly, to leam how and when to challenge authority, and to
invent, resulted, at best, in the development of identity. Identity
arises out of seeing both how we fit in and how we dont fit
in but especially how we dont fit in. The foundation of society
is here before we arrive and after we pass. Identity is discovering
our uniqueness in that continuity. As we take risks, and chal
lenge what exists, the friction between ourselves and society
makes all the boundaries clearer. Which is how we develop
identity, and why the best parts of male socialization are helpful
in developing identity. Of course, most men sell a good portion
of their identity out to institutions just as most women sell out to
a man. But the part of a man true to the values he has sorted out
still challenges, still takes risks, still benefits from the develop
ment of identity.
Humility
The stories a man reads of men who succeeded may have told
him to try, try again (or risfc, risk again), but did not tell him
how often even the greats failed. But he knows when he fails.
So a gap develops between the image of success and the reality
of his own vulnerabilityeven if he is successful. And if he is
part of the masses at the pyramids bottom, he deals with his
failure every day. Moreover, he cannot give into this image; that
is bad strategy. This silent, internal confrontation of his own
302 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Responsibility
Male socialization is a recipe book of taking responsibility. From
the responsibility of getting a job at age fourteen so he can pay
What I Love Most about Men 303
Sense of Efficacy
In the process of learning to take risks, men get especially strong
training in learning what is and what is not effectivea sense of
efficacy. In the process of trying a wide variety of jobs, we leam
what we are effective at. We are socialized with a different
attitude toward lost investmentsas experiences that fine-tune us
to the questions we must ask to prevent the next loss. We see the
loss as an investment in investing. Tinkering for hours under a
hood teaches him by trial and error how to be effective with a car
(I said teaches himit hasnt taught me!).
Once again, this is reflected in male-female language differ
ences. Men are much less likely to say, Maybe we can get Bill
to do that, and much more likely to say, Maybe if I try . . .
Sense of Humor
Whether its Woody Allens ability to laugh at the schlemiel in
himself or George Carlins ability to laugh at masculinity itself,
one of the best things that emerges from mens training to see
life as a game is the ability to laugh both at our own roles in the
game and at the game itself. Even the most traditional and
serious of male systems are mocked, such as Bill Murray in
Stripes mocking the military. It is difficult to find movies simi
larly mocking the traditional female rolefor example, a movie
mocking motherhood.
Resourcefulness
Learning to turn nos into maybes and maybes into yeses has its
negative side in the sexual arena1 call it rape training. But in
the world of business it is called resourcefulness: in finding a
way around every no a salesperson getsfrom the first secre
tary to the final closing. Women are currently teaming to do this
in the business arena, but its not yet being incorporated into
their sexual socialization. They may take initiatives, but thats
different from resourcefulness.
The best part of football, more than any other sport, is re
sourcefulness training: Which of forty-two options can we use
to advance this ball as far as we can, given the constantly
changing circumstances? Chess is like that. too. In all these
areassex. sports, and chessmen are socialized to expand
their resourcefulness.
So if male socialization
is mostly what weve got
Maybe what were good for
is also what were not!
11
How Can I Change a Man
(Without Just Getting Him
Ready for the Next Woman)?
Is Change Possible?
I have discussed how men spend their lives adapting to women
as much as the other way around. We just do it indirectlyas in
adapting to our bosses to support a woman we love. We have
seen how this performing makes men successful in attracting
women and unsuccessful with the women they attract. So men
are tom: what we did to get intimacy is the opposite of what it
takes to have intimacy.
Are men willing to adapt to new expectations? Yes. Men
adapt all the timeto the different expectations of different
bosses. How do we get men to adapt to new expectations from
women? By giving men different cuescues that make it clear
they will get more love from intimacy behavior than success
behavior. Why are men able to respond to love cues? Because
men have learned to provide for their own primary needs, and
are able to adapt to their primary remaining needlove. Per
forming creates an intimacy deficiency; when men arc convinced
that deficiency will be met, they are great adapters.
Adapting to expectations is not the best reason for change
internal approval isbut the former is the most common. And if
the changes themselves are healthy, and the relationship better,
why fight it?
In a sense, of course, we can only change ourselves. But that
changes the relationship formula. For this reason I will make
suggestions about what a woman can do differently even though
her question is about how to change a man. A woman might say,
Why should / changewhat about him? If either sex wishes
to change its partner, he or she can start the process only by
doing something differently himself or herself. Only because
women have posed most of the questions about how they can
change men do most of my suggestions concern how women can
start the process by doing something differently themselves.
When the complaints come from menabout changing women
the suggestions will be to men.
Unfortunately, men change the most after a relationship endsor
after a career failure. And few menor women, for that matter
312 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
etc. But all those options are really subsets of one option: to earn
income. Earn income for everyone we ever expect to have an
emotional relationship with. Think about that message. No love
until we pay for it. So we earn income to get everything from
promotions to job satisfaction, from survival to love. For love
and money, earn income. One option.
When men want more approval we intensify doing what we
are already doing. We learn to change by doing more of the
same.
Approval is a tricky subject. It kept our grandmothers in the
kitchen baking brownies and bread. Approval can keep the slave
a slave. Much of what men do is self-destructive. We might say
men get more approval than women for self-destructive behav
ior. If approval keeps the slave a slave we know why heroes are
often slaves.
What do mens approval cues need changing to? To defining
maturity as sorting out values rather than as commitmenta
dichotomy poignantly depicted in Somerset Maughams The Ra
zors Edge. Its only when a man takes the time to sort out
values (now this is called a mid-life crisis) that he sees the
incentive for changing the core of his relationship to women.
Why? Few working-class or middle-class men can afford to
arrange their lives according to their values and still support the
lives of a woman and children. But if a man believes he cannot
get a woman he is attracted to to share the financial responsibil
ity for herself, him, the children, and the mortgagefor better or
worse, he will stick with the socialization he has learned rather
than risk a life without approval. Most men never feel worthy of
asking women they are deeply attracted to to share that. So we
never allow ourselves even to want it.
Men wont change until we have a perspective on how power
less power makes us. A woman cannot help a man change until
she has a perspective on how powerless power makes men. Men
will not change as long as we convince women to marry up and
men to marry down.
Jia and Kirk are good examples. Jia felt she had a right to a
professional career. And, therefore, a right to have the house
work shared. Kirk felt that was fair. Over time, though, he found
himself very supportive of Jias career but not as supportive*
about sharing the housework. Jia felt she had to nag him and
treat him like a child. She began to feel it was easier to do it
herself than to remind him. She eventually stopped reminding
him, did the housework (and her career), and filled her vacuum
with resentment.
What went wrong? For a long time Kirk could not articulate
that he did not feel that the responsibility for producing the
income was shared. He felt he was taking on more of the
psychological responsibility of thinking about how to earn enough
for the childrens college education, the mortgage, and so on. Jia
talked of working or not working. He did not. Since he could not
articulate this, he just withdrew from certain parts of the house
work, waiting to be asked, acting as if he could do it or not do it.
The way Jia did with work.
I consistently find in my work with couples around the country
that good news in changing men requires a different formula
from bad news.
Here are the two major formulas: First, if the woman demands
her independence largely as a right, and she persists, either she
or he eventually splits; or she stays, but largely for his income;
or he conforms and stays. In what is probably the only accept
able one of the three alternatives (he conforms and stays), there
is a price. If he conforms to her demands without getting in
touch with his own demands, her respect and sexual interest in
him usually decrease. Ironically, his respect for her, and some
times sexual interest, too, increase.
Is this the good news? Fortunately, no. The second formula
for change is.
If the couple secs their responsibilities as shared, and both
undergo a simultaneous reexamination of their roles, dealing
with both of their gaps between theory and practice, then they
both have the potential for increasing respect for each other,
intimacy, and sexual energy. Depending on how they conduct the
reexamination. The increase in respect for the woman alone is
replaced more by mutual pride for their accomplishment as a
couple. If they do separate, they are more likely to remain friends.
These formulas may need a second reading. It's ten years of
research in one page.
H ow Can [ Change a Man . . . ? 319
C 1983 Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted uith p erm issio n . A ll rights reserved.
C 1983 Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Back home, the man does not benefit from the energy his
woman friend pours into retelling the story to other women
friends. Especially if a woman friend wants her negative com
ments kept confidential. He has not absorbed the level of signifi
H ow Can I Change a Man . . . ? 325
cance the change has for her. He experiences only her mood
changes. Or her sexual withdrawal. And they confuse him.
When she ultimately announces shes going to leave, hes aston
ished. And shes astonished that hes astonished. Which rein
forces her conviction that hes not only in another world, but
hopeless. She wonders why she didnt see this before.
Talking to a woman friend occasionally presents yet another
complication. The woman friend may empathize, for example,
by sharing similar problems she has had with men. This rein
forces their feelings of intimacy. One woman put it this way:
I used to share everything with Mario what I liked and
hated about Tony. But then things got better between me and
Tony, and Mario said she felt I wasnt sharing as much as
beforethat she didnt feel as close to me. I felt a type of
pressure from Mario to discuss Tonys and my problemsso I
even exaggerated some so she and I could feel intimate again.
Unfortunately, this also reinforces the focus on the problems
with men and not on her role in contributing to the problem. A
setup to repeat her part of the problem with the next man. And
ultimately to develop a need-hate (sometimes called love-
hate ) hostility toward men.
This dilemma has its equivalent in the dilemma a successful
man who fails has when he tells a less successful man of his
failure: he sometimes sees a surface support that masks an
internal smile. Unfortunately the socialization of many women to
overvalue a man (sometimes any man) can lead an unattached
woman to harbor a perverse investment in having her woman
friend return to the unattached statusthereby making her feel
less isolated, less lonely. In this sense, the friend may harbor an
unconscious joy in adding to the dumping on the man. A joy
masked by surface support.
2R\)tM6 CALLED F 0 fll THE I W G CALLEO FfVH THE
AlRPQRT. H SAlQ HE L0UE5 A t . AIRPORT. HE SAIQ HE LOSES A t
1983 Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Test One
Are you willing to try a Rick/Andrea-type experiment of sharing
all expenseseven if it means cutting back the lifestyle so the
sharing can be done?
Test Two
Have you looked for an apartment or home you could afford on
your own income? Would you be as willing to live in that place?
If the answer is If things got tough enough, yes . . . , thats a
sure hint youre willing to put up with a certain amount because
of the monetary advantages. To that extent you will tend to shy
away from honesty and confrontation until it gets close to that
borderline. To that extent theres prostitution in the relationshipan
exchange of monetary advantage for tolerance.
Financial ability to leave does not mean merely the ability to
support oneself financially. Rather, it means the ability to sup
port yourself in a style not drastically different from the one you
are presently sharing with himunless the style means abso
lutely nothing to you. But this is as rare as a man with a
beautiful woman who doesnt care if she gets fat.
328 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Test Three
Reflect back on the househusband versus Clint Eastwood role
models in Newsweek and Time. (Notice that the househusband
has no name.) Imagine going home to your parents at Christmas.
Youve met a man who is slightly more tender, warm, sensitive,
and vulnerable than you imgine Clint Eastwood to be. As a
househusband he has plenty of time for you. How do you feel in
your gut about telling them Ive fallen in love with a
househusband. We re going to be married? Does that sound
better or worse than Id like to introduce you to Clint Eastwood.
Were going to be married? The degree to which your gut
would prefer to introduce a less sensitive Clint Eastwood is the
degree to which you value fame and fortune over tenderness and
sensitivity.
Test Four
Think of how long you would be comfortable with a mans doing
something he wanted to do and earning half your income doing
it. Anne Goshen, a San Diego-based therapist and a business
consultant with a broad range of clientele, distinguishes between
two types of working couples: the dual career couple and the
career/job couple. The true dual career couple is one in which
both sexes match their career goals with their lifetime financial
goals and share responsibility. With the career/job couple one
spouse does this and the other docs not. Goshen finds most
working couples are actually career/job couples: Whenever one
cuts back and voluntarily works half-time, in my experience with
couples it is always the woman. An individual, however, may
be an exception. The test: Would you feel as comfortable with
your partner working half-time as you would working half-time
yourself?
Role-Reversal Conflict
Sal and Rose took a tape of their conflicts to a workshop I started
near my home in San Diego. They then did a role-reversal
conflicteach acting out the others role. They took the pas
sion they normally used to argue against each other and chan
neled the passion into taking the other persons position. Soon
they were arguing passionatelybut thfc opposite arguments to
those they had been arguing at homeuntil they and everyone at
the workshop broke down laughing.
How did they do this? They tried not to mock each other.
They imitated, but did not caricature, each others body lan
guage, silence, dominance, and passive-aggressiveness. How did
they reverse passive-aggressiveness? For example, Sal loved
Rose in a particular skirt; he told Rose; Rose agreed to wear it
more often, but Rose never got around to lengthening it. In
the role reversal, Sal played passive-aggressive by pretending not
to be able to find time to get his hair cut, as Rose preferred it.
Sometimes Rose, while playing Sal, was able to say things
like, I feel hurt because . . . and come up with a reason Sal
had never been able to get in touch with. They tried to get
themselves in touch with their partners underlying hurt. They
both had to give up power to do this. And in the process they
both gained power.
Role-Reversal Date
My favorite experiment to try personally and also to do in
workshops is a personal, private version of the role-reversal or
insight-reversal date. When Ive done it personally, its been
with a woman I already know. We exaggerate traditional roles in
reverseshe formally asks me out, makes dinner reservations,
H ow Can I Change a Man . . . ? 331
Wipe the Slate Clean (or If I Met You for the First
Time, Id Fall in Love with You All Over Again )
Many couples have difficulty undoing a relationships history.
Each partner feels changing would do little good because, after
all, the other partner would retain old perceptions. How can we
get new perceptions of our loved ones? How do we wipe the
slate clean ? One way is to spend a fun evening picking up our
partner all over again. Here is how I ask couples in my work
shops to wipe the slate clean.
Each person is instructed to bring separate cars to the work
shop on Saturday. That evening they plan to arrive at a restaurant
about five minutes apart. They find a way of eventually discov
ering each other at the restaurantintroducing themselves,
asking basic questions about values, what they do, and what they
want out of life. The process helps a couple remember why they
chose each other, and to feel acutely how deep the loss of the
other would be. When we fear loss most, changing is put into
perspective before it is too late.
Summary
In summary, how can a woman change a man? Without just
getting him ready for the next woman?
And
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Nicole Hollander, Sy/v/a, Rockport, Maine
I felt sad after the phone call. I knew they both had wanted
very much to make it. I felt her hurt at having her feelings
denied. And I also felt sad that those few sentences reflected
much about the male and female dilemma concerning feelings.
On the first level, she was able to express her feelings and he
was not. On the second level, when he did, she left him which
may tell us a lot about why he held back his feelings to begin
with. His feelings of ambivalence came into conflict with a
second set of feelings: the fear of losing Eleanor. Dwight was
withholding his feelings about lack of full commitment while
working on himself to increase his commitment.
But it goes deeper than that. Eleanor did not want Dwights
feelingsshe wanted feelings different from his. She wanted
him to have the feelings she felt he should have. Or else. As
when a man asks a woman, How many lovers have you had?
and she says, Fifty or so, and he disappears, she knows he
really did not want the answer to his question. He wanted
reassurance. The next time shes likely to lie: Just enough to
appreciate you. Both sexes withhold the feelings they feel will
lose them the love of the other sex. Ironically, Dwights denial
of feelings was actually a statement of his commitment.
Dwight and Eleanor illustrate another common myth about
feelings: that all feelings are equal. For example, by telling
Dwight she doesnt feel enough commitment from him, Eleanor
is likely to get him to do things to demonstrate his commitment.
Eleanors feelings are her powerthey get Dwight to do things.
But when Dwight admits he does not feel as committed as he
would like, he is giving power away. He risks losing her
psychologically and physically. Just as a woman who says,
I dont feel committed to this relationship gives power
away.
When we ask our partners for feelings that might result in their
expression of ambivalence, and they offer those feelings with
love, we are both vulnerable. Such feelings are only productive
if we are secure enough to hear them and focus our energies on
resolving the problems that led to the feelings. Otherwise, we
learn the lesson that reflected Jesse Owenss contempt for white
society while he verbally praised it: You dont get nowhere
giving people the low-down on themselves.
Negative feelings are the emotion both sexes express when we
feel our security will not be jeopardized by expressing them. In
the civilized world both sexes treat feelings as a luxury
338 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
Business
Women (in a sexual sense)
Issues
Sports *
Equipment (cars, stereos, guns, etc.)
One reason men are afraid to express feelings is that they fear the
one-sided distortion of these feelings to everyone else the woman
they love cares about. Once men become sensitive to these con
versations (many remain ignorant of them), the feeling of betrayal
runs deep. Why is it such a betrayal that I would label it the
worst infidelity-worse than her having sex with someone else?
The more successful a man is, the more mileage peopJe get out
of discovering his real vulnerabilities and discussing them be
hind his back. One discovery can lead to the loss of a promotion
to a close competitorwhich any successful man knows implies
the virtual platcauing of a promising career. The more successful
he is, then, the more a man has learned to cover his real
vulnerabilitiesand fake a few endearing ones.
Yet intimacy requires real vulnerability. And the more a man
protects himself at work, the more he needs someone with whom
he can be totally vulnerable at home. All his eggs of intimacy
and vulnerability arc in one basket.
When a woman reveals those vulnerabilities to a woman friend
a man may experience that as infidelity: he has opened himself to
her in an area that was as closed off by his socialization as
sexuality was by hers. When he senses that she is using his
vulnerabilities to build a relationship with a woman friend, he
feels like a high school girl who has finally opened up sexually
and discovers that she is being casually talked about by her
boyfriend to a buddy.
H ow Can I Get Him to Express Feelings? 343
the two listening exercises; for a woman, part of that will come
by understanding the male style of anger and what anger means
to a man. But before we look at the male style of anger, let me^
confront a touchy issue: making love after making war.
Many couples feel funny making love after making war. Even
if the passion is not a substitute for communication. My re
sponse? You didnt repress the negative feelings, so why repress
the positive ones? They all come from the same deep well. In
fact, go one step beyond not repressing the passion. After a
fight, seek it out. Couples who punish bad communication with
bad passion have civilized themselves into a lose-lose situa
tion. They soon find themselves in the mire of the Marital
Incest Taboo. In brief, when it comes to making love after
making war, love it; dont leave it.
In three words shes deflated his anger. She follows the listen
ing guide* and then its her turn to be heard. Now;
She: John, when you say God damn and shout, I feel like
you dont even like me. I agreed to listen and then
listened; I want you to agree to give me a chance to hear
whats bothering you without swearing or shouting.
She has done three things; (I) told John how she feels, (2)
reminded him how his need was addressed, and (3) given him
something specific he could do to replace what he should not do.
It is a fair exchange, which taps into his socialization for fair
ness. A solution is within reach, which taps into his socialization
to do something. He has felt heard, so he is in a more receptive
mood than he would be if he had not felt heard.
The biggest block for many women in getting a man to drop
his swearing and name-calling style is letting the style pass by
her for that first minuteuntil she has addressed the substance.
This is where it helps to internalize repeatedly where that style
came fromto remember that thirty seconds after he and a
member of another team had called each other all sorts of names
they were both concentrating on the next play.
*See Chapter 5, What Makes a Man Successful at Work That Makes Him
Unsuccessful at Home? Or Why Cant Men Listen?
348 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
bility violate her security; all of his feelings offer her hope. So
she has no problems drawing out his feelings more and more
deeply.
While awe training is like a biofeedback machine that actively
encourages selected feelings, most women have also been social
ized to subtly discourage a man from expressing other feelings.
When, in discussion groups, I observe a woman who fears her
man is going to say something that might threaten her security,
she often signals him not to continue by using either withdrawing
body language, a disapproving distance in the eyes, or watering
eyes. The opposites of awe training. If he says it anyway, a
frequent response is sidestep-ignore or sidestep-counterattack. "
If the sidestep leaves the man feeling unheard, the counterattack
also leaves him feeling acutely discouraged. The man responds
to cues to suppress feelings that would make her feel less secure
just as he responds to the awe training that solicits from him
feelings that make her feel more secure. The same woman who
started the relationship with a finely honed awe training when
she perceived her security as unthreatened now uses her relation
ship skills to cut off other feelings she feels might be threatening
to her security.
Since almost all relationship dynamics are symbiotic, a man
must take responsibility for the awe training he feeds into by
being hooked into a womans supportive expressions. If she
sidestep-ignores, he must take responsibility for not pursuing
the sidestep (as he would with a man) out of fear of being called
too logic-focused and out of touch with his feelings.
His adaptiveness to her supportiveness blinds him to the pres
sure he feels when she tells him, I just know you can beat
Stuyoure a hundred times better than he is. It appears
supportive to the man because he is not aware of how it discour
ages him from expressing fear of failure, feelings like, I feel
Stu is more qualified. The flip side of support is pressure to
perform. He has become addicted to her supportiveness and may
adapt by unrealistically discounting his competitors and therefore
overworking, and feeling even worse if he loses to an unworthy
competitor. Eventually he may turn to drinking or use women,
religion, or success symbols to relieve the pain. All these are
ways a man suppresses his fears of failureby not understanding
that the flip side of the support to succeed is pressure to succeed.
How can a woman actively draw out his feelings? By using
her awe training and body language to solicit his fears of failure
350 REWEAVING MASCULINITY
and the portions of his feelings that do not enhance her ego or
immediate security. The incentive for her? Intimacyand a man
who will stay with her because his primary needs that he cannot
meet by himself are being met by her. Female socialization
taught her the tools to solicit his feelings; the underlying question
is deciding whether she really wants his truly vulnerable feelings.
New-Age Feelings
Who can be politically correct about abortion and in touch
with all of her or his feelings? Being in touch with feelings
requires being in touch with what does not conform to either the
age-old or the new-age. Feelings have no constituency. To be
politically correct is to be a constituency conformer. In a sense,
to be politically correct is to be emotionally constipated. It
requires the suppression, not the expression, of feelings.
The expression of feelings can be misused to conform to
new-age expectations. I remember a man in a Manhattan mens
group who exclaimed, I cry more than anyone in this group.
By turning crying into competition he had turned it against itself.
He had become the biggest jock in the sensitivity group.
Each time he touches the wrong person the wrong way it could
mean his lifes workcareer, income, and salarydown the
drain. And his family, his daughter or son, lost forever. Instead*
of feeling his external reward power as power, he will feel the
powerlessness of accepting a preprogrammed definition and seek
to create his own. Instead of feeling guilt at his privilege to
initiate, he will feel the impact of being worse than Americas
second-class citizenan untouchable.
Dialogues on Feelings
Q: Some men I know seem really in touch with their
feelingsboth my therapist and a minister I know, for
example. How did they get this way?
WF: Male clergy and male therapists are experts at listening
to the feelings of others, but rarely at expressing vul
nerabilities of their own. They are feeling profession
als, who may only be feeling heroes. The reason
people come to them is that they maintain an image of
respectability. A woman plays into a mans being a
feeling hero if she is not giving him respect for the
feelings he expresses about himself that lead her to
admire him less.
Q: For example?
WF: Suppose a Catholic woman goes to confession and tells
her priest she and her husband are having marital diffi
culties. She asks the priest for advice. Imagine him
saying, Well, I cant help you. The only human rela
tionship Ive ever had is with my parents and, to be
honest, one short-term relationship in a monasterywith
a man.
better represent how only when a woman shares male risks can
she really begin to understand men; how empathy without shar
ing is intellect without gut; how sharing male risks is part of
becoming independent of men and with men rather than indepen
dent and without men; and how the woman who shares male
risks stops categorizing men as heroes or jerks because she is
sharing that responsibility herselfsometimes being her own
hero, sometimes her own jerk.
ing feeling that women have been victimized by, and are no
longer taken care of by, men. This could not be admitted di
rectly. So the focus on women as independent and men as even,
more oppressive had to be established before there could be an
emphasis on blaming men as too immature to commit. Hence the
popularity of books playing on the women-who-cant-get-a-man-
to-commit theme in 1983 to 1986: The Peter Pan Syndrome;
Smart Women, Foolish Choices; and Women Who Love Too
Much; all of which were on The New York Times best-seller list
for long periods. These books, as we have seen, could not have
made it far with reverse titles. So we entered the period of
Marry the Enemy.
What was the larger picture behind the way we got from
Daddy knows best to Daddy molests, or marry the
enemy ?
During the past two decades, women have been caught be
tween the traditional method of having their specialness con
firmed by the fact that a hero-type "male discovered their
specialness, thereby confirming it, and, on the other hand, creat
ing that feeling of being number one via their own achievements.
As women as a group strove more to confirm their number-one
status by their own achievements, it became functional to define
their major competitorwhite menas an enemy, just as the
United States and the USSR define their major competitor as the
enemy. The more men were the enemy, the more special women
were. The more men were the enemy, the more women could
feel solidly aligned and sisterly with other women. The more
men were the source of all evil, the more energy it stimulated in
the woman to sec her specialness as defined in put-downs of this
source of evil. These, then, are some incentives against change.
And they are part of human nature.
However, the part of many women that still desires a hero-
type man to confirm her specialness is in conflict with the
man-as-enemy approach. For many a woman this creates a con
stant hero/asshole dichotomy in her approach to men. And this
can wreak havoc on her personal life.
Some women, though, like feminist authors Robin Morgan
and Sonja Johnson, try to resolve this conflict. The Robin Mor
gan resolution: Men are the enemy, except a few special men;
one of these few, of course, chose me. Or the approach of
Sonja Johnson, author of From Housewife to Heretic, as spoken
before the profeminist National Organization for Changing Men
Conclusion: Clearing the Way for Love 357
Both sexes use the other sex to feel special. One way is by
feeling needed. As we looked at the five components of power,
Conclusion: Clearing the Way for Love 359
eighteen-year-old boy who must register for the draft while his
sister does not. (If registering for death is a benefit, hed like to
see the punishment.) It means little to Phil, a thirty-five-year-old
veteran of Vietnam, who is just one of the estimated 1 to 1.5
million Vietnam War veterans to suffer post-traumatic stress.1
And it means little to Tony, who every morning looks at his
seven-year-old son, deformed without a right hand, try to pick
up a fork at the breakfast table, feeling guilty because, Agent
Orange gave that to him. To Tony, Men make the rules to
benefit men misses something. Tony never made any more
rules than his nine-year-old daughter. Men make rules to bene
fit men seems to tell Tony, Its your fault you got that Agent
Orange. Its your fault your son is deformed. To Tony, it is
blaming the victim.
By glorifying male death and calling it power, we have
been able to justify having men sacrifice themselves to save
others and then blame them for causing the war.
Our response is, Well, they do cause the war . . . as if it
were part of their power, rather than understanding that it is,
in fact, part of womens power to be able to be in a warm
home while men are sent off to die. But is it not mensome
menwho cause the wars? And dont most men behave in
warlike fashion? How can a sex that puts us all in danger be
lovable?
To clear the way for loving men we must look carefully at our
unquestioned assumption that men cause warstherefore . . .
If our larger image of men is distorted, it will distort the way
we look at individual men. And the way we love them.
other sex reflects the area in which we need to look at our own
responsibility.
What tempted us away from seeing this gender dance, and into
saying Men have the power ? In part, it was that the Western
world has overvalued the one component of power which men
are assigned to gatherexternal-reward power.
We also viewed male adaptation to their jobs quite literallyas
if men were adapting only to their jobs. Men did, of course,
adapt to their jobsand their bosses, which is why IBM could
be called Ive Been Moved. But we tended to forget that male
adaptation to jobs was also male adaptation to women (as in
taking that responsibility to provide 76 percent of the average
familys income). We therefore thought of books on relation
ships and love only on the literal level, as if women were
the sex concerned with love, forgetting that books on love served
a second purpose for the married woman earning 24 percent of
the family incomethey were the equivalent of what business
school was to men.
In this atmosphere of forgetfulness in which men become
more and more our enemy, it was forgotten that male adaptation
to women was also quite direct. A restrained kiss was male
adaptation; or his saying, Id like to make love rather than
Id like to have sex ; or Would you like a foot massage?
rather than Id like to make love. Or his willingness to give
up a lifetimes stimuli of beautiful women in every commercial
to commit to sex with one woman exclusively, and less of it than
he wants. This is perhaps the most unappreciated adaptation in all
human behavior. And almost as unappreciated is what this willing
ness to adapt implies about mens desire for intimacy and love.
When Todd buried his teddy bear and stuffed the sheep into
the garbage can with his dinner over it, Todds parents finally
put two and two together. They blamed themselves. Had they*
allowed their beliefs to make Todd into a social guinea pig?
In their attempt to allow gentleness had they fostered their sons
self-hatred? They felt themselves to be in a dilemmathey
wanted their son to have options they didnt have when they
were children, including the option of gentleness, but they couldnt
change the school system.
Or could they? Tom and Jeanne invited to dinner two couples
they respected who also shared their feelings about options. They
decided to run four of them for the school board over a period of
two years. Three of the four won. A year later, they influenced
the choice of a new school superintendent, arranged for special
staff training for the teachers, and perceived the impact as filter
ing down to their own children. Jeanne and Tom took a route
considerably distinct from most parentswho play victim to
the system, rather than understanding*that the inactive parent
is also part of the system. The educational system is quite
easily influenced, because schools are locally based; the child is
home-based; her or his peers are neighborhood-based; and the
television is bedroom-based. To suggest we cannot create change
because we cannot change the whole educational system is
usually an escape from changing the most resistant system:
ourselves.
Alliance building
The listening matrix
Reversing roles
Conclusion: Clearing the Way for Love 369
CHAPTER 1
IN T R O D U C T IO N T O P A R T 2
373
374 NOTES
CH APTER 2
CH APTER 3
v
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
23. Ibid.
24. Brothers, op. cit.. p. 103.
25. Blumstein and Schwartz in a lecture given at the department of,
sociology. University of California at San Diego, May 24,
1984.
26. Ibid.
27. Blumstein and Schwartz, op. cit., p. 125.
28. Ibid., p. 265.
29. Simenauer and Carroll, op. cit., p. 205.
30. Blumstein and Schwartz, op. cit., p. 195.
31. U.S. Bureau of Census, Current Population Reports, ser. P20,
no. 389, Marital Status and Living Arrangements, March
1983, Table 5 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1984), p. 32. According to Table 5, 12.7 million chil
dren under 18 live with just a mother; 1.2 (or 1.3) million
children live with just a father.
32. National Center for Health statistics data, cited in S. B. Gar
land, Divorce Easier Second Time Around, Los Angeles
Times, October 28, 1983, part V, p. 2*3.
33. Dowling, op. cit., p. 141.
34. See Lynette Trier and Dick Peacock, Learning to Leave (New
York: Warner Books, 1983).
35. See Jacques Ellul, The Technological System (New York: Con
tinuum, 1980).
CHAPTER 7
7. Dan Kiley, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never
Grown Up (New York: Dodd-Mead, 1983).
8. Dan Kiley, The Wendy Dilemma: When Women Stop Mothering
Their Men (New York: Arbor House, 1984).
9. Sonya Friedman, Men Are Just Desserts (New York: Warner
Books, 1983).
10. Elissa Melamed, Mirror, Mirror (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1983).
11. Blumstein and Schwartz, op. cit., p. 161.
12. Herbert Hildebrandt and Edwin Miller, "The Newly Promoted
Executive," monograph, University of Michigan, Graduate School
of Business Administration, Ann Arbor, 1984.
13. Ibid.
13a. Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1986. Suit brought against
J.C. Penney in Canoga Park, Calif.
14. Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire (New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1977).
15. Billie Wright Dziech, The Lecherous Professor (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1984).
16. Louise Armstrong, Kiss Daddy Goodnight: A Speak-Out on
Incest (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978).
17. See Suzanne Steinmetz, "The Battered Husband Syndrome,
Victimology, vol. 2, nos. 3-4, 1977-1978, pp. 499-509.
18. Ibid.
19. Murray Straus, "Wife Beating, Victimology, vol. 2, Novem
ber 1977.
20. Observation is made by Suzanne Steinmetz in Victimology, op.
cit., about Richard Gelless The Violent Home (Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage, 1974).
21. Fredric Hayward, "Another WarAnd Only Men Die, The
Washington Post, June 5, 1982.
22. Ibid.
23. See Paul Dean, "Husbands Too Ashamed to Admit Abuse by
Wives, Newsday, January 20, 1981.
24. Committee on the Fetus and Newborn, Standards and Recom
mendations for Hospital are of Newborn Infants, 5th ed.
(Evanston, 111.: American Academy of Pediatrics. 1971).
25. American Health, September 1984, p. 54.
26. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States:
1983. Uniform Crime Reports for the United States (U.S. De
partment of Justice, Washington, D.C., 1984).
27. Hayward bases this on his interviews with prison officials.
28. UCSD Department of Sociology, Newsletter, fall 1984.
29. The 1,000-strip total came from the Washington Post, 44 daily
380 NOTES
strips, ten days; the Los Angeles Times, 23 daily strips, ten
days; and the Chicago Tribune, 33 daily strips, ten days. No
one day was the same so that no strip was duplicated. My
assistant was George Lewis Singer.
30. Marilyn French, The Womens Room (New York: Summit Books,
1977).
31. A. C. Nielson ratings, 1984.
32. Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Feminine Beauty in American Culture,
doctoral dissertation, University of California at San Diego, in
progress. Foltyn measured square footage of departments offer
ing male versus female items in shopping malls and boutiques,
on the assumption that if womens departments were not creat
ing enough profit per square foot, they would be forced to give
way to mens or general departments. Foltyn found seven times
as much square footage was devoted to female personal items as
to male personal items.
C H A P T E R 8*
11. John Gordon, The Myth of the Monstrous Male (New York:
Playboy, 1982).
12. Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1984).
13. Cassell, op. cit.
14. Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Why Can't Men Open
Up? (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1984).
15. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples (New
York: William Morrow, 1983), p. 304.
16. Barbara Leon, The Male Supremacist Attack on Monogamy,
in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House,
1978).
17. Dr. Joyce Brothers, What Every Woman Should Know about
Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), pp. 175-176.
18. See Linda Wolfe, The Cosmo Report (New York: Arbor House,
1981).
19. Jacqueline Simenauer and David Carroll, Singles: The New
Americans (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 198.
20. Ibid., p. 199.
21. John Gordon, op. cit., p. 194.
22. Ibid., p. 57.
23. Simenauer and Carroll, op. cit., p. 150.
24. The most recent extensive documentation is in Blumstein and
Schwartz, American Couples.
25. Brothers, op. cit., p. 165.
CHAPTER 9
C H A P T E R 10
C H A P T E R 11
How Can / Change a Man (Without Just Getting Him Ready for
the Next Woman)?
1. Natasha Josefowitz, Is This Where I Was Going? (New York:
Warner Books, 1983).
2. See Ken Druck, Secrets Men Keep (New York: Doubleday,
1985).
C H A P T E R 12
C H A P T E R 13
383
384 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RESOURCES
N ational C on gress f o r M en
68 D eering Street
Portland, M E 04101
The questions below are the questions each sex most frequently
asks about the other. These questions are asked so frequently in part
because the answers normally given are rarely answered in the
numerous contexts which constitute life. By referring to each page
in the book in which the question is addressed, the reader or re
searcher can view the answers from a number of different contexts.
Pages in italics indicate the most direct answers. Other pages
give relevant background from which the reader may draw dif
ferent conclusions from my own.
Page numbers with descriptions in parentheses (e. g., Anal
ogy) indicate that the question is addressed in that particular
section of that page.
Questions like When women do make it in business, why
do they seem to become like men? imply that, in fact, they do
become like men. The pages to which I refer the reader do not
always agree with the underlying assumptions (that women do
become like men), or the underlying critique (that it is com
pletely bad to be like a man). Instead, pages refer the reader to a
number of considerations related to the question.
How can I change a manwithout just getting him ready for the
next woman? 81 (Think); 82 (Victim); 104-06; 121-28:
158 (Men Commit)-163; 309-33 (Ch. 11-Change); 334-53
(Ch. 12-Feelings).
When I take initiatives, men seem to back off. Why? 13-14;
121-28; 155-56; 253-54 (Initiatives); 261-62; 275 (Power
ful Men/Boys).
Why wont men listen? xxvi; 81 (Think); 112-16; 121-28;
139-49 (Ch. 5-Listen); 304 (Doing); 313 (Analogy); 31719;
323-23.
Why cant men get in touch with their feelings? xxi-xxvi; 9-12;
24-33; 34-35; 88-89; 102-06; 110-37; 157 (Afraid); 164-69;
173-75; 176; 177-79; 213-15; 232-33; 235; 248-53; 259-60;
262-63; 263-66; 267-69; 279 (Sensitivity); 296; 304; 317-19;
334-53 (Ch. 12-Feelings); 360-61; 369-72.
Why do men often say Youre special, and then I never see
them again? 13-14; 18-20; 40-43; 121-28; 129-31; 152;
755-56; 157 (Afraid); 159-63; 175-82; 199-203; 211-13;
253 (Separate); 261-62.
Why do so many men have so few men friends? 3-12; 12839;
139-49; 296 (Complaints); 360-64.
Why are girly magazines so big with men? 82-89; 11020;
121-31; 242-53; 274 (150 Initiatives); 276
Why cant men ask for help? 40-44; 46-48; 62-66; 80-82;
95-100; 110-16; 139^)9; 267; 276 (Paying); 293; 296-97;
299-301; 304-05; 316 (Earth); 334-50 (Feelings); 360-61.
Why do men spend so much time watching sports (even when
they say they want more time with their family)? 40-43;
46-48; 62-64; 112-16.
Why cant men let a friendship develop . . . and then, if sex
happens, it happens? 81-90; 121-28, 129-31; 137-38;
242-53; 278-79.
Sometimes when Im with a man I see his open and vulnerable
parts. And then when he gets around other men, he closes
them off. Why is that? xxi-xxvi; 80-82; 121-31; 155; 157;
173-75; 248-53; 262-63; 267; 296 (Complaints); 316 (Earth);
326; 351-53; 355-61; 369-70.
Why arc men so preoccupied with their jobs even when they are
losing contact with their family? 3-14; 18-20; 24-28; 40-43;
43-44; 62-64; 91-100; 109-38 (Ch. 4-Preoccupied); 152-54;
183; 197-98; 267-71; 292 (Nurturing); 299; 304; 317-18;
327-28.
388 INDEX OF QUESTIONS
Why are men so often like boys underneath? 109-38; 157 (Afraid);
175-79; 213-14; 242-53; 262-63; 267-65; 269 (Searching);
274-75; 294; 296 (Complaints); 307; 316; 348-53.
Why do men seem to have contempt for women on the one hand
(witness their jokes) and put them on a pedestal on the other
hand? 3640; 59-61; 80-82; 85-86; 87-89; 110-28; 129-31.
If men arc just desserts, why am I willing to give up so much
for a little banana split? 18-20; 24-26; 77-78; 82-83; 87-88;
92-106; 150-55; 157-59; 164-72; 194-219; 2J7-^2; 208-69;
271-73; 278-81; 290-91; 292 (Nurturing); 297-98; 299-300;
317-19; 327-28.
Why do men rape? 82-90; 93; 116-28; 129-32; 242-53;
279-80.
Arc men just interested in conquestis that the real excitement
for men? 18-20; 102-04; 110-12; 137-38; 150-51; 155-56;
157-59; 159-68; 168-73; 179-82; 232-53; 258-62; 278-80;
297-98; 317-19; 359-60.
Why do men always feel they have to promise loveeven when
theyre not in love ? xxi-xxvi; 13-14; 18-20; 121-28;
150-51; 152-54; 155; 157; 197-98; 246-51, 261-62; 279-80,
323.
Why do women cam 59 percent of what men earn even when
their contributions are indispensable ? 18-20; 24-31; 33-36;
4349; 66-77; 82; 91-99; 112-20; 137-38; 139-45; 164-73;
276-78 (esp. 277); 291-301; 304.
Men have the powerwhy would they want to give it up?
xix-xx; 3-14; 66-89; 92-96; 102-04; 110-38; 171-72;
225-30; 235; 248-51; 258-59; 267; 290; 316-19; 326 (Ego);
351-52; 360-63.
Why cant men admit when theyre wrong? 81; 112-16; 121-28;
131-36; 39-49; 248-53; 261-62; 291-92 (Fairness); 294-95
(Ego); 301 (Humility); 311-14; 322-33; 324-25; 326 (Ego);
33440, 343-46.
Im an attractive woman. 1 have lots of options. Yet so many
men I end up with arc successful but insensitive. Why?
24-28; 31-34; 40-43; 62-66; 87-89; 104-06; 121-25;
129-31;139-49; 164-68; 242-53; 258-59;267-68; 272-73;
279-81; 317-19; 322-23; 342^13, 359-60; 363-64.
Why did my father criticize me so often? 81; 39-49; 295 (Issue)-
297; 304-05; 334-36; 344^17.
Why arc men so paranoid about homosexuality? 112-16; 121-28;
128-29; 129-31; 248-60; 257-58.
INDEX OF QUESTIONS 389
son, Lyn Lindsey, Joyce McHugh, Joe Pleck, Alix Olsen, Ruth
Rogin, Gloria Steinem, Deborah Sundmacher, Chris Wimpey,
and the professional staff of McGraw-Hill, from administrative
assistants to Gladys Justin Carr, chair of the editorial board, all
of whom sought to make this book better than it would have
been without them.
General Index
396
GENERAL INDEX 397
Complaining and doing, 304, 357 Darwin, Charles, 136, 371, 372
Complaints of loved ones, 143-44 D ays o f Our Lives, 45
(See also Home life) De Beers Corporation ads ("D e
Compromise and humility, 301-02 Beers Transfer ), 27-29,
Condrey, John and Sandra, 334, 35, 83
338, 341 DeLorean, John, 115
Conquest, importance of, 158-59 Dean, James, 99, 147
Conquest and men's sexual Dear A bby, 243
interests, 278-81 Death, male and female, view of,
Consciousness balancing, 232-33 227-30, 231-32
Consciousness raising, 123, 134, Death Wish (movie), 227-28
195 Deceptions (romance), 65
Constituency conformance, 351 Defensive sensitivity, xxiii
Contests and fantasies, 70-71 Depression, xix, 97
Control of ones life, 8-9, 60 Desperately Seeking Susan, 91
Conversion objects, 285-86 Dialogues:
Cooper, Alice, 64 feelings, 352-53
Cooper, Gordon, 133 sex, success, and fragile egos,
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 294 267-81
Copley, Helen; Copley Enterprises, Diamond, Neil, 109, 112, 121, 132
59 Diamonds, diamond ads, 24-29,
Cosmo cat, 79 31, 35, 49, 89
Cosmo Reports, xxx Diana, Princess, 35, 116
Cosmopolitan magazine, 20, 21. Dillon, Matt, 99-100
53, 56, 74, 79, 84, 87, 89, Dishonesty, male, about sexual
102, 239, 263 feelings, 130, 131
ads, 32 -3 3 , 6 7 -6 9 , 78 Divorce, 101, 136-37, 143, 180,
career booklet, 66, 68-69 184-85, 238, 266, 295,
cartoons, 196, 245, 254, 255 363, 366-68, 369
Coty perfume, 88 and female maturity, 280
Creativity and problem solving, 305 and success, 270
Crepeau, Margaret, 350 Doctors wives, 182
Criticism and change, xxviii Doing and complaining, 304,
(Sec also Change) 357
Criticism, unsolicited, 340 Dolls, 2 9 -3 0
Crossings (Steel), 58 Donahue, Phil, 41-43
Crying, male, 350 Donahue show, 322
Culture conflict, 54-55 Don Juans; Don Juan type,
Cuomo, Mario, 217 278-79
Doolittle, Eliza (doll), 29
"Daddy knows less, 219-23 Double standard, and fantasies,
Daddy Warbucks, 220, 222 173, 258-62
Dali, Salvador, 294 Dowling, Colette, 169, 182
Dallas (TV), 76 -7 7 , 228 Dual workaholism, 273-74
Daniel 1, Rosemary, 85 Dvnastv (TV), 22, 35-36, 76-77,
Dans, Cassandra, 252 228
400 GENERAL INDEX
Role reversal (.see Sexism, new) Sex objects, xix-xx, 129, 131. 134,
Roles and friendship. 295-96 138. 153-54, 158. 182, 242
Rolling Slone, 63 and success objects, 250-51 .
Romance novels, 14, 55, 57-61. Sex roles, xxviii-xxxii
64 -6 6 . 73. 85-86. 97. 236, and advertising (see Advertising)
363, 364 analysis and training, 367-68
Romantic Times Award, 64n and causes of death, 12
Roosevelt. Eleanor. 77 and expression of feelings.
Roots (Haley). 235 340-41, 351
Roth. Philip. 225 and giving, 290-91
Rules, social. 291-92 injurious to both sexes, xxvii
Ruth. Babe. 300 and men's fragile egos. 268-69
and myths about feelings, 334
Smyv magazine, 32. 83 and power, 3-14
Schiff. Dorothy. 146 and responsibility. 363
Schwartz and Blumstein, 195 role-reversal exercises, xxx-xxxi
Security, xxiv. xxviii. 82-83, 97. (See also Sexism, new)
102. 150-51. 160-61, 182, sex-role training and divorce,
337^10. 359 136-37. 143. 366-68, 369
and awe training, 3 4 8 ^ 9 and success, 4-8
Self-concept, 147 symbiosis, xxii
and beliefs. 249 and technology, 137
Self-destructive behavior. 314 (See also Commitment; Perfor
Self-doubt. 251 mance; Sexism, new)
Self-fulfilling prophecies. 234-35, Sex symbols. 97
343 Sexism, new. 189-266, 369
Self-improvement. 55-5 7 . 79, 197. anger and vanity. 269-71
201-04 and battery, wives and husbands.
(See also Change) 225-30. 231-32. 234
Self-listening. 139-44 and bondages. 258
Self magazine, 21. 102 and circumcision, infant. 230-31
ads. 31 -3 2 . 34, 72 consciousness balancing. 232-33
Self-starling. 299-300. 3 0 1 .3 1 2 . double standard, 258-62
357 and expression of feelings. 341
Self-sufficiency and male lovable and fathers abusing female
ness. 299. 303 children. 223-25, 239. 240
Sellek. Tom. 41 fathers as know-nothings. 219-23
Sensitivity, defensive, xxiii and female as single parent.
Seventeen magazine, 20. 21. 36, 256-57
37. 48, 77. 81. 102 feminism, shift of. 237-42
ads. 37. 39, 46-4 7 , 4 8 -5 0 , 80. independence, feminine, 206.
88-89 212. 215-19
Sex. virginal. 39-40 (See also Independence)
Sex and Destiny (Greer). 237 intimacy, women's fear of. 198,
Sex as dirty. 242-51 200-03. 212-13
Sex and love, 249-50 and male impotence, 262-66
GENERAL INDEX 409
uhki
IZI
ELIZABETH T A M
This book is not just to set the record
straight as to why I gained weight and how
I lost it. Its more than a specific program
for weight loss; its a chance for you to
throw away old self-destructive habits and
embrace a more positive way of life...
-E L IZ A B E T H TAYLOR
Hugely Entertaining !
- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Inspirational. - LOS ANGELES TIMES
WHY F U N N Y , E N L IG H T E N IN G ...
M EN A N E X T R A O R D IN A R IL Y
IN S I G H T F U L S O C IA L
CO M M ENTARY THAT M AKES
A HU G E LEAP TO W A R D
ARE M A K IN G L O V E A R E A L IT Y
H e r b G o ld b e r g , P h .D ., a u t h o r
o f T h e H a z a r d s o f B e in g M a le
THE B Y F A R T H E M O S T B R IL
L IA N T A N D O R IG IN A L B O O K
E V E R W R IT T E N A B O U T M E N .
W AY A m a n w h o r e a d s th is b o o k
w i l l fe e l u n d e r s t o o d in a w a y
h e h a s n e v e r f e lt u n d e r s t o o d
THEY
b e fo re . H e w ill w a n t e v e r y
w o m a n h e h a s e v e r lo v e d to
r e a d it .
A l b e r t E llis , Ph D., a u t h o r o f
ARE A G u id e t o R a t io n a l L in in g
H A R D -H IT T IN G , C H A L L E N G
IN G , IM M E N S E L Y S T IM U L A T IN G
A N D IL L U M IN A T IN G .
N a t h a n ie l B r a n d e n ,
a u th o r o f T h e P s y c h o lo g y o f
R o m a n tic L o v e
<rfT H E B E S T B O O K I H A V E E V E R R E A D O N M A L E - F E M A L E
R E L A T IO N S H IP S . . . S U P E R B A N D B R IL L IA N T .
K e n n e t h H . B la n c h a r d , P h .D ., c o - a u t h o r
of T h e O n e M in u te M a n a g e r
E v e r y m a n a n d w o m a n in A m e r ic a s h o u ld r e a d th is b o o k
It w i l l c h a lle n g e y o u r e v e r y a s s u m p t io n a b o u t t h e o p p o
s ite s e x . It w i l l e n l i g h t e n y o u , in f o r m y o u , e v e n s h o c k
y o u w i t h n e w in s ig h t s in t o y o u r lo v e d o n e s m o s t s e c r e t
f e e l i n g s a n d d e s ir e s . A n d it j u s t m a y c h a n g e y o u r l i f e
fo r e v e r ...
" W IT T Y , P R O V O C A T IV E , A N D P R O B I N G . . . I g u a r a n t e e t h is
b o o k w i l l le a v e y o u w i t h a d i f f e r e n t u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f m e n .
A n d w o m e n . S IM P L Y T E R R IF IC !
C a r o l C a s s e ll, P h .D , a u t h o r o f S w e p t A w a y
A N IN C R E D IB L E A N D I N S IG H T F U L B O O K . I f e lt a s if I w a s
r e a p in g t h e r e w a r d s o f D r. F a r r e lls l if e t i m e o f e x p e r ie h c e
w o r k in g w i t h w o m e n a n d m e n ." H a r o ld B lo o m f ie ld , M .D .,
a u th o r o f H o w to S u r v iv e th e L o s s o f a L o v e
A M IL E S T O N E IN T H E R E L A T I O N S H IP B E T W E E N T H E
S E X E S . W C B S R a d i o , S a n D ie g o
w o m e n fo r m o re t h a n
t w e n t y y e a r s . H is
ground-breaking re
s e a r c h is t h e b a s i s o f
W h y M e n A re T h e W ay
T h y A r e , w h ic h m o s t e x
p e rts a g re e m a y b e o n e
o f th e m o s t e x t r a o r d i
n a r y , e y e - o p e n in g b o o k s
j o f o u r t im e .